WEEK 8 LECTURE
VIRTUAL PHILOSOPHY

Today lecture delved into the realms of reality versus virtual reality and it's progression through time. The thought processes of modern society have been shaped by philosophers of the past in Plato, Aristotle and Socrate's. Ever since Plato developed the argument that reality was expressed in hidden forms that could only be appreciated by an elite who thus had the duty to use the arbitrary powers of the police state to enforce a harsh idealism. We have been obsessed with our seemingly inevitable integration with technology. Which can be seen through the numerous pieces of creative work of Science Fiction in movies, TV and literature. All these pieces of creative work deal with the themes of our integration with technology and it being used to suppress us into the very thing that Plato argued all those years ago, a harsh idealism done by a police state.

So what is virtual reality exactly, one definition is virtual reality is an artificial environment that is created with software and presented to the user in such a way that the user suspends belief and accepts it as a real environment. I think the most important factor in the debate about the emergence of virtual realities is that the user (or the mind of the user) must be able to accept the virtual environment as real, otherwise the whole concept falls flat and would be rejected by the user. One way to simulate a user into a particular environment is to do it gradually over time and we can see a process of this in human technological history. By looking at the advances of technology in history we can see a theme where technology and man are becoming more closely intertwined. From the telegraph to the radio through to TV, cinema an now computers we are moving closer and closer to having a symbiotic relationship with technology.

Whether humans as a whole accept virtual reality as an 'official' existence or reject it is still debatable, but what isn't, is the path were all blissfully walking down. I guess that path can be described as the path to a new 'existence' or as Plato put it the path to a harsh idealism. Just as Plato and his contemporaries were known for outside of the box thinking, the authors and makers of these Science fiction movies and Cyberpunk literature may be the new-age philosophers of the current technological age. Even though the philosophers of past and present are all preaching the same sermon, I guess it's up to the individual to listen. Also it's up to the individual on how 'virtual' they get.