The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality
by Michael Heim
PREFACE
"Seen philosophically, the word processor creates a new relationship to
symbols, to language, and, by extension, to reality." (xi)
"The information infrastructure comes just in time. It brings a
cybernetic dimension that allows us to join together to discuss and
critique imminent technologies." (xii)
"The electronic net captures everything, first as a shared project, then as news, and finally as an issue for debate." (xii)
"...the question of the ontological shift - the reality shift - has become more manifest." (xiii)
"Our access to knowledge changes dramatically as we computerize the arts, sciences, and business." (xiii)
"An ontological shift is a change in the world under our feet, in th
whole context in which our knowledge and awareness are rooted." (xiii)
"The holistic background or world is the basic reality underlying our
knowledge and awareness. Ontology, the study of being, is the effort
to develop a peripheral vision by which we perceive and articulate the
hidden background of beings, the world or context in which they become
real and meaningful." (xiii)
"Our whole psychic framework changes as we use computers to read and write." (xiv)
"The central philosopher here is G.W. Leibniz, who developed computer
prototypes and who was himself something of a prototype for today's
cybersage." (xiv)
"...the move from digital to virtual reality." (xvi)
"Machines became appliances, appliances offered an interface, the
interface opened to cyberspace, and cyberspace offered virtual worlds
to explore." (xvi)
"The profundity of the VR experience calls for something of a grander
stature, something philosophical and religious. The time has come to
grasp the phenomenon in its depth and scope. After all, we are talking
about virtual 'reality,' not fleeting hallucinations or cheap thrills.
We are talking about a profound shift in the layers of human life and
thought. We are talking about something metaphysical." (xvii)
CHAPTER 1 – INFOMANIA
"Efficiency, speed, and networked communication are in our bones." (7)
"Word processing is a part of our destiny. Each epoch has its love
affair, its grand passion, an enthusiasm that gives it distinction.
Pyramids or cathedrals do not distinguish us, and shopping malls will
never last. Ours is not the age of faith or reason but the age of
information. Madness, Plato reminds us, is ambivalent; it can be
divine or insane, inspired or crackpot. Lovers, inventors, and artists
are maniacs. So are computer enthusiasts. For infomaniacs, word
processing is not merely a tool." (8)
"When a technology touches our language, it touches us where we live." (8)
"These visionaries [the chief inventors] were not marketing a
commercial product but seeking a revolution in the way we think." (8)
"Infomania erodes our capacity for significance. With a mind-set fixed
on information, our attention span shortens. We collect fragments. We
become mentally poorer in overall meaning. We get into the habit of
clinging to knowledge bits and lose our fell for the wisdom behind
knowledge. In the information age, some people even believe that
literacy or culture is a matter of having the right facts at our
fingertips. We expect access to everything NOW, instantly and
simultaneously. We suffer from a logic of total management in which
everything must be at our disposal. Eventually our madness will cost
us.
"There is a law of diminishing returns: the more information accessed,
the less significance is possible. We must not lose our appreciation
for the expressive possibilities of our language in the service of
thinking." (10)
CHAPTER 2 - LOGIC AND INTUITION
"Like microscopes, computers extend our vision vastly, but unlike
microscopes, computers process our entire symbolic life, reflecting the
contents of the human psyche." (14)
"Boolean logic functions as a metaphor for the computer age, since it
shows how we typically interrogate the world of information." (15)
"The type of question we ask, philosophers agree, shapes the possible
answers we get. The way in which we search limits what we find in our
searching." (15)
Symbolic Logic -> "Boole's 'algebra of logic' uses formulas to symbolize logical relations." (15)
"Aristotle himself used symbols sparingly in his logic, and when he did
use symbols, they served merely to point out language patterns." (16)
"With Boolean logic, on the contrary, direct statements have value only
as instances of the relationship among abstract symbols. Direct
language becomes only one possible instance of algebraic mathematics,
one possible application of mathematical logic." (17)
"With mathematical precision, modern logic could present linguistic
arguments and logical relationships within a total system, a formal
organization having its own axioms and theorems. Systemic consistency
became more important than the direct reference to things addressed in
our experience." (17)
"Note already one telltale sign of infomania: the priority of system.
When system precedes relevance, the way becomes clear for the primacy
of information. For it to become manipulable and transmissible as
information, knowledge must first be reduced to homogenized units.
With the influx of homogenized bits of information, the sense of
overall significance dwindles. This subtle emptying of meaning appears
in the Venn diagrams that graphically display Boolean logic." (17)
"As modern logicians say, the terms of logic do not in themselves carry
existential import. The terms reveal relationships among themselves,
but they remain unconnected to existence or to the direct references of
firsthand experience." (18)
"This shift in the meaning of logical terms has drastic consequences
for logic itself and for logic as a formal study. Traditional
Aristotelian logic presupposed an actual subject, ideal or real, to
which logical terms or words refer. Traditional logic also presupposed
that logical thinking is, like spontaneous thought and speech,
intimately involved with a real subject matter. Mathematical logic
gained the upper hand by severing is significance from the conditions
under which we make direct statements. Today logicians like Willard
Van Orman Quine can argue that a concrete and unique individual thing
(to which we refer as such) has no more reality than 'to be the value
of a variable,' at least when we consider things 'from a logical point
of view.' The modern logical point of view begins with the system, not
the concrete content. It operates in a domain of pure formality and
abstract detachment. The modern logical point of view proceeds from an
intricate net of abstract relations having no inherent connection to
the things we directly perceive and experience." (19)
"We can contrast this aloof abstraction with the traditional logic that
still swam in the element of direct experience. Traditional logic
began with direct statements, insofar as its logical language
presupposed as necessary the existential interpretations of
statements. When we state something in everyday language, we attribute
something to something; we attribute the color mauve to the wall, the
quality of mercy to a creditor. We speak of what is before us, and we
speak in the context of other people who may also have access to what
we are talking about. We commonly assume the existence of or at least
the existential relevance of what we are talking about. Modern
symbolic logic, on the contrary, mimics modern mathematics, which has
no interest in the actually existing world, not even the world of
direct statements. In this sense, modern logic operates at a remove
from our everyday involvement with things." (19-20)
"We sometimes run across a person arguing with impeccable logic for a
conclusion contrary to our own gut feelings, and we often feel
overwhelmed, and forcibly so, by the sheer power of the argument
itself. Logic can move like a juggernaut adrift from any personal
engagement with its subject matter." (20)
"Logic, like mathematics, operates outside the intuitive wisdom of
experience and common sense. Hence the mathematical idiot savant.
Like math, logic can hover above particular facts and circumstances,
linking chains of statements trailing from some phantom first premise.
We can be perfectly logical yet float completely adrift from reality."
(20)
"By its very nature, logic operates with abstractions. But modern
logic operates with a greater degree of abstraction than does
Aristotelian logic, placing us at a further remove from experience and
from felt insight." (20)
"The word
meditate came originally from the Latin
meditari, meaning 'to be in the midst of, to over in
between.'" (23)
"Genuine meditation refreshes our original potential to mvoe in any
direction. Our highest mind remains alert but flexible, firm but
formless -- in short, omnidirectional. Meditation truly expands the
psyche and opens it to the delicate whisperings of intuition." (23)
"A Taoist sage once wrote that 'thinking is merely one way of musing.'
Tightly controlled thought remains but a trickle in the daily stream of
thoughts flowing through the psyche. Most of the time, the background
mind muses with a soft undercurrent that quietly sorts things out,
gently putting things together and taking them apart." (24)
"A more relaxed and natural state of mind, according to Siu, a Taoist,
increases mental openness and allows things to emerge unplanned and
unexpected." (24)
"The musing mind operates on a plane more sensitive and more complex
than that of consciously controlled thought. Musing is not wild in the
sense of wanton but wild in the sense of flowing, unforced, and
unboundedly fruitful." (24)
"Thinking itself happens only when we suspend the inner musings of the
mind long enough to favor a momentary precision, and even then thinking
belongs to musing as a subset of our creative mind." (24)
"A narrow awareness sacrifices the intuitive mind." (25)
"Boolean search logic affects our mental vision just as long hours at the computer screen affect our eyesight." (25)
"Only when we strain to see do our eyes lose the surprise of
perceptions. Constant straining induces a sensory myopia in which we
need to straIn in order to see better what we wish to see. We lose
much of our peripheral vision when we use our eyes willfully. Likewise
with the mind's eye. A relaxed and easy thought enjoys intuitive
turns, and thinking at its best muses over human symbols." (25)
"We may see more and see it sharply, but the clarity will not hold the rich depth of natural vision." (25)
"Looking for something in a book library frequently leads to
discoveries that overturn the questions we originally came to ask." (26)
"Libraries may be, in this strict sense, the last museums of the stored
language, the last outposts of predigital intuition." (26)
"When books become mere sources of information, they lose the atmosphere of contemplative leisure and timeless enjoyment." (27)
"Information plugs us into the world of computerized productivity, but
the open space of books balances our computer logic with the graces of
intuition." (27)
CHAPTER 3 - HYPTERTEXT HEAVEN
"The term
hypertext refers to the existence of an unnoticed or additional dimension." (30)
"Like fictional hyperspace, hypertext unsettles the logical tracking of the mind." (31)
"The jump, not the step, is the characteristic movement in hypertext." (31)
"With the jump, all texts are virtually coresident. The whole notion
of a primary and a secondary text, or originals and their references,
collapses. In magnetic code there are no originals, no primary,
independently existing documents. All texts are virtually present and
available for immediate access." (34)
"Computers are efficient causes in fulfilling a final cause: the mutation of text." (36)
"Underneath the computer's calculating power lies an inner core sprung from a seed planted two centuries ago." (36)
"Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) founded modern logic as a science of symbols." (36)
"Leibniz imagined a world federation based on common linguistic
symbols. He advocated a universal system of symbols for all the
sciences, hoping that a rational scientific language might smooth the
way toward international cooperation." (37)
"Leibniz believed all problems to be, in principle, soluble. The first
step is to create a universal medium in which to communicate. With a
universal language, you can translate all human notions into the same
basic set of symbols. A universal character set (characterista
universalis) can absorb every significant statement or piece of
reasoning into a logical calculus, a system for proving things true or
false -- or at least for showing them to be consistent or
inconsistent. Through a shared language, many discordant ways of
thinking can exist under a single roof. Once disagreements in attitude
or belief are translated into matching symbols, they can yield to
logical operations. Problems that earlier seemed insoluble can stand
on a common ground. In this belief, Liebniz was to some extent
continuing a premodern Scholastic tradition. That medieval tradition
believed that human thinking (in its pure or ideal form) was more or
less identical with logical reasoning and argument. To the partisans
of dispute Leibniz would say, 'Let us put this into our common
language, let us sit down and figure it out, let us calculate.' He
worked on a single system to encompass all the combinations and
permutations of human thought. He longed for symbols to foster unified
scientific research throughout the civilized world. The universal
calculus would compile all human cultures, bringing human languages
into a single shared database." (37)
"No temporal unfolding, no linear steps, no delays, limit God's
knowledge of things. The temporal simultaneity, the all-at-one-ness of
God's knowledge serves as a model for human knowledge in the modern
world as projected by Leibniz's work." (38)
"Modern logic smoothes the way for the postmodern jump of thought." (38)
"Hypertext emulates a divine access to things. Although God does not
need to jump, the hypertext user leaps through the network of knowledge
in something like an eternal present." (38)
"Total information is the illusion of knowledge, and hypertext favors
this illusion by letting the user hop around at the speed of thought."
(38)
"The more the routine sequences and chores belong to the computer
program, the more the human psyche can give rein to immediate insights
and creative angles." (39)
"The information age may seem increasingly nonliterate or hollow
because we move in quite a different symbolic element that has its own
tempo. In contrast with literate cultures of the past, we face an
enormous volume of stored information. Our ancestors faced the task of
slowly learning from experience, of gleaning from life whatever they
could discover. They then tried to amplify whatever they could
confirm. They learned how to pass along an expanding knowledge base.
They stored knowledge impersonally in writing and eventually learned to
automate knowledge so taht it could become information." (39)
"Today our task seems to be the reverse of that of our ancestors.
Given a constant stream of information, we must be skeptical of any
structures that narrow its flow. For us, no single overarching order
can set up proper channels for the incoming information. We also need
to sort through and make sense of the tide of information. Information
is abundant but without any fixed center around which to organize it.
Our task is to hold onto the anchor of our own experience to find
meaning in the sea of information." (39-40)
CHAPTER 5 - HEIDEGGER AND MCLUHAN: THE COMPUTER AS COMPONENT
"Heidegger felt technology to be an overwhelming force that challenges the reassuring maxims of traditional morality." (54)
"The game paradigm ensures that the relationship remains antagonistic.
The combative paradigm still holds sway over the popular imagination,
the human-versus-the machine contest, with a winner/loser outcome." (58)
"Plato postulated the Good as subsistent in itself. The Good, the
agathon, energizes the forms of things, making them stable and
self-consistent. So too artificial-intelligence research, at least in
one of its early phases, postulates formal patterns as the be-all and
end-all of intelligence." (60)
"The two terms
mind/brain and
computer/program refer to beings, to definite
entitites within the world." (60)
"The chess paradigm distracts us from the present issue, because it
makes us construe our relationship to computers as confrontational
rather than collaborative." (60)
"Very different from the computer as an opponent is the computer as a
component. The computer has become an ingredient in human knowing.
Instead of confronting a potential rival, we find ourselves interfacing
with computers." (60)
"As we now live and work with computers in our writing, building,
banking, drawing, and so forth, how does our reality change?" (61)
"What is the meaning of this intimate connection of Being with computers?" (61)
"What Heidegger saw was something even more sinister than a revolt of the machines." (61)
"The danger of technology lies in the transformation of the human
being, by which human actions and aspirations are fundamentally
distorted." (61)
"But the truth of the matter might as well be that the language machine
takes language into its management and thus masters the essence of the
human being." (Hebel quote, 61)
"The computer automates the composition, storage, and transmission of written words." (64)
"Once acclimated to the technology, we play it much as a musician plays
an instrument, identifying with it, becoming one with it." (64)
"To say that any technology or extension of man creates a new
environment is a much better way of saying the medium is the message.
Moreover, this environment is always 'invisible' and its content is
always the old technology. The old technology is altered considerably
by the enveloping action of the new technolgy." (McLuhan quote, 66)
"'The content of the new environment is always the old one. The
content is greatly transformed by the new technology.... Today the
environment itself becomes the artifact.' Technology would not sweep
the older things away but would transform them while placing them
before us as though nothing had changed." (McLuhan, 66)
"There is nothing good or bad about print but the unconsciousness of
the effect of any force is a disaster, especially a force that we have
made ourselves." (McLuhan quote, 67)
"When a technology touches our language, it touches us where we live." (67)
Walter J. Ong...."who treats the psychodynamics -- the shifts in
mentality -- that occur in Western history as new technologies for
language storage come into prominence." (67)
"Ong traces two major shifts in knowledge storage: the oral-to-literate
and the chirographic-to-print shifts. The first occurred when the
culture moved from a predominantly oral-based society to a society
increasingly based on the written word. The second shift moved from
handwritten (chirographic) texts to the more widely disseminated,
mechanically produced printed books." (67-68)
"Ong traced these shifts in writing technologies as they affected human
awareness and in turn interactive epistemology (knowledge as it occurs
in relation to tools and other persons)." (68)
"Already in Plato we see the seeds of the Western drive to standardize
things, to find what is dependable and typical in them." (68)
"But this 'nothing' finally makes an appearance after the whole world
has become a rigid grid of standardized forms and shapes conceived and
engineered by humans. As the wasteland grows, we see the devastation
of our fully explicit truths. We see that there is, must be, more.
The hidden extra cannot be consciously produced. Only by seeing the
limits of standardization can we begin to respond to it. We have to
realize that each advance in typifying and standardizing things also
implies a trade-off. When we first reach forward and grasp things, we
see only the benefits of our standardization, only the positive side of
greater clarity and utility. It is difficult to accept the paradox
that no matter how alluring, every gain in fixed intelligibility brings
with it a corresponding loss of vivacity. Because we are finite, every
gain we make also implies a loss of possibility. The loss is
especially devastating to those living in the technological world, for
here they enjoy everything conveniently at their disposal --
everything, that is except the playful process of discovery itself."
(69)
"In Hegelian fashion, Ong sees the electronic media sublating the
earlier oppositions, the oral and the literate, so that electronics
achieves an encompassing synthesis. Electronic visuals, supported by
voices, re-creates human presence and reunites the individuated members
of the community." (69)
"History is a series of ambiguous gains bringing hidden losses. The
series of epochs that makes up the history of reality (Seinsgeschichte)
expands or contracts with different hermeneutic projects but never
permits a single cumulative narrative. Each moment of historical
transformation brings a challenge of interpreting the losses and gains,
the trade-offs in historical drift. The drift of history allows no
safe haven from which to assess and collect strictly positive values
once and for all." (70)
CHAPTER 6 - FROM INTERFACE TO CYBERSPACE
"When technology becomes an interconnected system, at some point we sit
down and address the system itself; we program it. When technology
covers a number of particular tasks, linking them into a system, then
the next step is to gain a vantage point where we can obtain
information about the system and can call programs for the system to
run. No longer a set of discrete machines, our appliances communicate
with one another and function through information. A cybernetic
infrastructure coordinates instruments that measure everything from
weather and traffic flow to banking transactions. We feed input into
the system, which then constantly feeds information back to us. Our
selves plus the machines constitute a feedback loop. Information
brings into existence the information age, and the holy shrine of our
era becomes the computer screen. Then we have the next stage of our
marriage to technology. The newlyweds begin to influence each other.
We go from appliance to interface.” (75)
“Buzzwords cue conversations, directing our attention momentarily.
Occasionally a buzzword strikes a deeper resonance: the word buzzes, we
push on it, and suddenly a magic door swings open to who we are and
where we stand in history. Such buzzwords are keywords. Keywords are
not just fuzzy metaphors or poetic symbols of an epoch, like ‘the
computer age’ or ‘the nuclear age.’ Rather, keywords apply analogously
across the entire spectrum of cultural life. They apply accurately and
in detail to many aspects of our lives – each aspect differently.
Keywords cut across our whole cultural world, and interface is a
keyword.” (76)
“The importance of the state-of-the-art interface goes beyond economic competition and includes national defense.” (76)
“Through representations and simulations, we contact the world we know and even the limits of what we know.” (77)
“..reality augmentation…superimposes information on a direct reality percept.” (77)
“An interface occurs where two or more information sources come
face-to-face. A human user connects with the system, and the computer
becomes interactive. Tools, by contrast, establish no such
connection.” (77)
“The software interface is a two-way street where computers enhance and modify my thinking power.” (78)
“In ancient times, the term interface sparked awe and mystery. The
archaic Greeks spoke reverently of prosopon, or a face facing another
face. Two opposite faces make up a mutual relationship. One face
reacts to the other, and the other face reacts to the other’s reaction,
and so on ad infinitum. The relationship then lives on a third thing
or state of being. The ancient term prosopon once glowed with mystic
wonder. The same word later helped Christians describe their
Trinitarian Godhead. The Father and the Son subsist together as an
interface or distinct spirit. The ancient word suggests a spiritual
interaction between eternity and time.” (78)
“Cyberspace renders a represented or artificial world, a world made up
of the information that our systems produce and that we feed back into
the system.” (79)
“The more we habituate ourselves to an interface, the more we live in cyberspace.” (79)
“We can travel endlessly in cyberspace, without limits, for cyberspace
is electronic, and electronically we can represent not only the actual
physical universe but also possible and imagined worlds. But to a
finite incarnate being, such an infinity constitutes a cage, a
confinement to a nonphysical secondary realm.” (80)
“We find it difficult to become aware of our own internal states without the objective representations of the interface.” (80)
“The strength of the mind/body grows when the mind’s attention synchronizes with the internal energy.” (81)
“Holding the breath or shallow breathing is the respiratory equivalent
of the stare we typically use at the interface. And when we stare, we
usually hold our breath.” (81)
“The deepest peril of the interface is that we may lose touch with our
inner states. By inner states, I do not mean anything arcane. The
Taoists urge us to contact our inner physical organs, to ‘see’ our
liver, ‘smell’ our lungs, and ‘taste’ our heart. By this they mean
something quite simple. They mean not to lose the acute sensitivity to
our bodies, the simplest kinds of awareness like kinesthetic body
movement, organic discomfort, and propriosensory activity like
breathing, balance, and shifting weight. The loss of such simple inner
states may seem trivial. Taken as a whole, however, this awareness
constitutes the background for the psychic life of the individual.
‘The body is the temple of the spirit.’” (81)
“One far-seeing inventor of virtual-reality systems, Myron Krueger, has
dedicated his life to bringing full freedom of body movement to the
interface. His work has yet to blossom, as most developers produce
systems that shackle the body with goggles, gloves, and datasuits. But
even if we learn to interact with computerized objects and remain
unencumbered by oppressive VR systems, will we maintain enough power of
additional awareness needed for both primary and secondary worlds – at
the same time? At the very least, we will need to retain our powers of
attention, just for the sake of long-term mental and physical health.”
(81-82)
“The growing interface exacerbates a tension already built into modern
life. In his preface to a book by F.M. Alexander, John Dewey saw an
‘internecine warfare at the heart of our civilization between the
functions of the brain and the nervous system on one side and the
functions of digestion, circulation, respiration and the muscular
system on the other. Dewey regarded this a ‘perilous affair.’ A
half-century before the computer interface, Dewey observed: ‘If our
habitual judgments of ourselves are warped, because they are based on
vitiated sense material, then the more complex the social conditions
under which we live, the more disastrous must be the outcome. Every
additional complication of outward instrumentalities is likely to be a
step nearer destruction.’” (82)
CHAPTER 7 - THE EROTIC ONCOLOGY OF CYBERSPACE
“Cyberspace is a metaphysical laboratory, a tool for examining our very sense of reality.” (83)
“When designing virtual worlds, we face a series of reality questions.
How, for instance, should users appear to themselves in a virtual
world? Should they appear to themselves in cyberspace as one set of
objects among others, as third-person bodies that users can inspect
with detachment? Or should users feel themselves to be headless fields
of awareness, similar to our phenomenological experience? Should
causality underpin the cyberworld so that an injury inflicted on the
user’s cyberbody likewise somehow damages the user’s physical body?
And who should make the ongoing design decisions? If the people who
make simulations inevitably incorporate their own perceptions and
beliefs, loading cyberspace with their own prejudices as well as their
insights, who should build the cyberworld? Should multiple users at
any point be free to shape the qualities and dimensions of cyber
entities? Should artistic users roam freely, programming and directing
their own unique cyber cinemas that provide escape from the mundane
world? Or does fantasy cease where the economics of the virtual
workplace begins? But why be satisfied with a single virtual world?
Why not several? Must we pledge allegiance to a single reality?
Perhaps worlds should be layered like onion skins, realities within
realities, or be loosely linked like neighborhoods, permitting free
aesthetic pleasure to coexist with the task-oriented business world.
Does the meaning of ‘reality’ – and the keen existential edge of
experience – weaken as it stretches over many virtual worlds?
Important as these questions are, they do not address the ontology of
cyberspace itself, the question of what it means to be in a virtual
world, whether one’s own or another’s world. They do not probe the
reality status of our metaphysical tools or tell us why we invent
virtual worlds. They are silent about the essence or soul of
cyberspace.” (83-84)
“How does the metaphysical laboratory fit into human inquiry as a
whole? What status do electronic worlds have within the entire range
of human experience? What perils haunt the metaphysical origins of
cyberspace?” (84)
“The way in which we understand the ontological structure of cyberspace
will determine how realities can exist within it. But the structure of
cyberspace becomes clear only once we appreciate the distinctive way in
which things appear within it.” (84)
“By connecting with intellectual precedents and prototypes, we can
enrich our self-understanding and make cyberspace function as a more
useful metaphysical laboratory.” (84)
“Our love affair with computers, computer graphics, and computer
networks runs deeper than aesthetic fascination and deeper than the
play of the senses. We are searching for a home for the mind and
heart. Our fascination with computers is more erotic than sensuous,
more spiritual than utilitarian. Eros, as the ancient Greeks
understood, springs from a feeling of insufficiency or inadequacy.
Whereas the aesthete feels drawn to casual play and dalliance, the
erotic lover reaches out to a fulfillment far beyond aesthetic
detachment.
“The computer’s allure is more than utilitarian or aesthetic; it is
erotic. Instead of a refreshing play with surfaces, as with toys or
amusements, our affair with information machines announces a symbiotic
relationship and ultimately a mental marriage to technology. Rightly
perceived, the atmosphere of cyberspace carries the scent that once
surrounded Wisdom. The world rendered as pure information not only
fascinates our eyes and minds, but also captures our hearts. We feel
augmented and empowered. Our hearts beat in the machines. This is
Eros.” (85)
“Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive – point to the near-future, phenomenal reality of cyberspace.” (85)
“The sixteenth-century Spanish mystics John of the Cross and Teresa of
Avila used a similar point of reference. Seeking words to connote the
taste of spiritual divinity, they reached for the language of sexual
ecstasy. They wrote of the breathless union of meditation in terms of
the ecstatic blackout of consciousness, the llama de amor viva piercing
the interior center of the soul like a white-hot arrow, the cauterio
suave searing through the dreams of the dark night of the soul.
Similarly, the intensity of Gibson’s cyberspace inevitably conjures up
the reference to orgasm, and vice versa…” (87)
“But the orgasmic connection does not mean that Eros’s going toward
cyberspace entities terminates in a merely physiological or
psychological reflex. Eros goes beyond private, subjective fantasies.
Cyber Eros stems ultimately from the ontological drive highlighted long
ago by Plato. Platonic metaphysics helps clarify the link between Eros
and computerized entities.” (87)
“The outer reaches of the biological sex drive, she explains to
Socrates, extend to the mental realm where we continually seek to
expand our knowledge.” (87)
“On the primal level, Eros is a drive to extend our finite being, to
prolong something of our physical selves beyond our mortal existence.
But Eros does not stop with the drive for physical extension. We seek
to extend ourselves and to heighten the intensity of our lives in
general through Eros. The psyche longs to perpetuate itself and to
conceive offspring, and this it can do, in a transposed sense, by
conceiving ideas and nurturing awareness in the minds of others as well
as our own. The psyche develops consciousness by formalizing
perceptions and stabilizing experiences through clearly defined
entities. But Eros motivates humans to see more and to know more
deeply. So, according to Plato, the fully explicit formalized
identities of which we are conscious help us maintain life in a ‘solid
state,’ thereby keeping perishability and impermanence at bay.” (87-88)
“A short step in fundamental assumptions, however, can take centuries,
especially if the step needs hardware support. The hardware for
implementing Platonically formalized knowledge took centuries.
Underneath, though, runs an ontological continuity, connecting the
Platonic knowledge of ideal forms to the information systems of the
matrix. Both approaches to cognition first extend and then renounce
the physical embodiment of knowledge. In both, Eros inspires humans to
outrun the drag of the ‘meat’—the flesh—by attaching human attention to
what formally attracts the mind. As Platonists and Gnostics down
through the ages have insisted, Eros guides us to Logos.” (88)
“In the Republic, Plato tells the well-known story of the Cave in which
people caught in the prison of everyday life learn to love the
fleeting, shadowy illusions projected on the walls of the dungeon of
the flesh. With their attention forcibly fixed on the shadowy moving
images cast by a flickering physical fire, the prisoners passively take
sensory objects to be the highest and most interesting realities. Only
later, when the prisoners manage to get free of their corporeal
shackles, do they ascend to the realm of active thought, where they
enjoy the shockingly clear vision of real things, things present not to
the physical eyes but to the mind’s eye.” (88)
“Only by actively processing things through
mental logic, according to Plato, do we move into the upper air of
reliable truth, which is also a lofty realm of intellectual beauty
stripped of the imprecise impressions of the senses. Thus the
liberation from the Cave requires a reeducation of human desires and
interests. It entails a realization that what attracts us in the
sensory world is no more than an outer projection of ideas we can find
within us.” (89)
“Properly trained, love guides the mind to the well-formed, mental aspects of things.” (89)
“The notion of ideal Forms in early Platonism has the allure of a
perfect dream. But the ancient dream remained airy, a landscape of
genera and generalities, until the hardware of information retrieval
came to support the mind’s quest for knowledge. Now, with the support
of the electronic matrix, the dream can incorporate the smallest
details of here-and-now existence. With an electronic infrastructure,
the dream of perfect FORMS becomes the dream of information.” (89)
“Filtered through the computer matrix, all reality becomes patterns of
information. When reality becomes indistinguishable from information,
then even Eros fits the schemes of binary communication. Bodily sex
appears to be no more than an exchange of signal blips on the genetic
corporeal network.” (90)
“The transformation of sex and personality into the language of information…” (90)
“In its computerized version, Platonic Eros becomes a master of
artificial intelligence, CYBEROS, the controller, the Neuromancer.” (91)
“Leibniz, therefore, is one of the essential philosophical guides to
the inner structure of cyberspace. His logic, metaphysics, and notion
of representational symbols show us the hidden underpinnings of
cyberspace. At the same time, his monadological metaphysics alerts us
to the paradoxes that are likely to engulf cyberspace’s future
inhabitants.” (92-93)
“Leibniz dreamed of the matrix.” (93)
“The first step was to create a universal medium in which conflicting
ideas could coexist and interrelate. A universal language would make
it possible to translate all human notions and disagreements into the
same set of symbols. His universal character set, characteristic
universalis, rests on a binary logic, one quite unlike natural
discourse in that it is neither restricted by material content nor
embodied in vocalized sound,” (93)
“Through the common binary language, discordant ways of thinking can exist under a single roof.” (93)
“At such high speed, the felt semantic space closes between thought, language, and the thing expressed.” (94)
“Human knowledge imitates a Being who knows
things perfectly and knows them in their deductive connections. The
omniscient Being transcends finite beings. Finite beings go slowly,
one step at a time, seeing only moment by moment what is happening. On
the path of life, a finite being cannot see clearly the things that
remain behind on the path or the things that are going to happen after
the next step. A divine mind, on the contrary, oversees the whole
path. God sees all the trails below, inspecting at a single glance
every step traveled, what has happened, and even what will happen on
all possible paths below. God views things from the perspective of the
mountaintop of eternity.” (95)
“Human knowledge, thought Leibniz, should emulate this visio dei, this
omniscient intuitive cognition of the deity. Human knowledge strives
to know the way that a divine or an infinite Being knows things. No
temporal unfolding, no linear steps, no delays limit God’s knowledge of
things. The temporal simultaneity, the all-at-once-ness of God’s
knowledge serves as a model for human knowledge in the modern world as
projected by the work of Leibniz. What better way, then, to emulate
God’s knowledge than to generate a virtual world constituted by bits of
information? To such a cyberworld human beings could enjoy a God-like
instant access. But if knowledge is power, who would handle the
controls that govern every single particle of existence?” (95)
“So in order to achieve a divine access to things, the global matrix
functions like a net to trap all languages in an eternal present.
Because access need not be linear, cyberspace does not, in principle,
require a jump from one location to another.” (96)
“In the novel The Naked Sun, Asimov depicts the movement in hyperspace:
‘There was a queer momentary sensation of being turned inside out. It
lasted an instant and Baley knew it was a Jump, that oddly
incomprehensible, almost mystical, momentary transition through
hyperspace that transferred a ship and all it contained from one point
in space to another, light years away. Another lapse of time and
another Jump, still another lapse, still another Jump.’” (96)
“From one perspective, the monadology conceptually describes the nature
of beings who are capable of supporting a computer matrix. The
monadology can suggest how cyberspace fits into the larger world of
networked, computerized beings.” (97)
“The monad exists as an independent point of vital willpower, a surging
drive to achieve its own goals according to its own internal dictates.
Because they are a sheer, vital thrust, the monads do not have inert
spatial dimensions but produce space as a by-product of their
activity. Monads are nonphysical, psychical substances whose forceful
life is an immanent activity. For monads, there is no outer world to
access, no larger, broader vision. What the monads see are the
projections of their own appetites and their own ideas. In Leibniz’s
succinct phrase: ‘Monads have no windows.’” (97)
“Realities are representations continually placed in front of the
viewing apparatus of the monad, but placed in such a way that the
system interprets or represents what is being pictured.” (97)
“The monad knows through the interface. The interface represents
things, simulates them, and preserves them in a format that the monad
can manipulate in any number of ways.” (97)
“Since each unit represents everything, each unit contains all the other units, containing them as represented.” (98)
“These different perspectives arise not from different physical
positions in space—the monads are not physical, and physical space is a
by-product of mental perception—but from the varying degrees of clarity
and intensity in each monad’s mental landscape.” (98)
“The harmony of all the entities in the world comes from the one underlying operating system.” (98-99)
“For many, networks and bulletin boards act as computer antidotes to
the atomism of society. They assemble the monads. They function as
social nodes for fostering those fluid and multiple elective affinities
that everyday urban life seldom, in fact, supports.” (100)
“We are more equal on the net because we can either ignore or create
the body that appears in cyberspace. But in another sense, the quality
of the human encounter narrows. The secondary or stand-in body reveals
only as much of ourselves as we mentally wish to reveal. Bodily
contact becomes optional; you need never stand face-to-face with other
members of the virtual community.” (100)
“At the computer interface, the spirit migrates from the body to a
world of total representation. Information and images float through
the Platonic mind without a grounding in bodily experience. You can
lose your humanity at the throw of the dice.” (101)
“From the pit of life in the body, the virtual life looks like the virtuous life.” (102)
“The living, nonrepresentable face is the primal source of
responsibility, the direct, warm link between private bodies. Without
directly meeting others physically, our ethics languishes.
Face-to-face communication, the fleshly bond between people, supports a
long-term warmth and loyalty, a sense of obligation for which the
computer-mediated communities have not yet been tested.” (102)
“Without the direct experience of the human face, ethical awareness shrinks and rudeness enters.” (102)
“As the expanding global network permits the passage of bodily
representations, ‘having it both ways’ may reduce trust and spread
cynical anomie.’” (103)
“A global international village, fed by accelerated competition and
driven by information, may be host to an unprecedented barbarism.” (103)
“Traditional publishing resembles a medieval European city, with the
center of all activity, the cathedral or church spire, guiding and
gathering all the communal directions and pathways. The steeple
visibly radiates like a hub, drawing the inhabitants into a unity and
measuring the other buildings on a central model.” (104)
“Cyberspace without carefully laid channels of choice may become a waste of space.” (105)
“Set up a synthetic reality, place yourself in a computer-simulated
environment, and you undermine the human craving to penetrate what
radically eludes you, what is novel and unpredictable. The computer
God’s-eye view robs you of your freedom to be fully human.” (105)
“The erotic lover reels under the burden of ominiscience: ‘If all
things could be counted…’ Can the beloved remain the beloved when she
is fully known, when she is fully exposed to the analysis and synthesis
of binary construction?” (106)
“With the thrill of free access to unlimited corridors of information
comes the complementary threat of total organization. Beneath the
artificial harmony lies the possibility of surveillance by the
all-knowing Central System Monad.” (106)
“The ideal of the simultaneous all-at-once-ness of computerized
information access undermines any world that is worth knowing.” (107)
“The Central System Monad never gets beyond the terminals into the physical richness of this world.” (107)
“As we suit up for the exciting future in cyberspace, we must not lose
touch with the Zionites, the body people who remain rooted in the
energies of the earth.” (107)
CHAPTER 8 – THE ESSENCE OF VR
“’Virtual reality is an event or entity that is real in effect but not in fact.’” (109)
“The heads-up display in the cockpit sometimes permits the pilot to
view the real landscape behind the virtual images. In such cases, the
simulation is an augmented rather than a virtual reality.” (113)
“Boeing Aircraft plans to project a flight controller into virtual
space, so that the controller floats thousands of feet above the
airport, looking with an unobstructed view in any direction (while
actually seated in a datasuit on the earth and fed real-time visual
data from satellite and multiple camera view-points).” (114)
“Mike McGreevy and Lew Hitchner walk on Mars, but in the flesh they sit in a control room at NASA-Ames.” (114)
“By permitting immersion, telepresence offers the operator great
control over remote processes. But at the same time, a
psycho-technological gap opens up between doctor and patient. Surgeons
complain of losing hands-on contact as the patient evaporates into a
phantom of bits and bytes.” (115)
“Krueger’s Glowflow, a light-and-sound room, responds to people’s
movements by lighting phosphorescent tubes and issuing synthetic
sounds. Another environment, Psychic Space, allows participants to
explore an interactive maze in which each footstep corresponds to a
musical tone, all produced with live video images that can be moved,
scaled, and rotated without regard to the usual laws of cause and
effect.” (115-116)
“Unique to Fedorov’s vision is its guiding moral spark. Instead of
basing the conquest of nature on dominance, aggression, and egoism,
Fedorov shunned the notion that humans should rule the cosmos out of a
selfish desire for material wealth and abundance. Instead, he
envisioned the conquest of nature as an act of altruism. But being
generous to future generations can be less than purely altruistic, for
they can return the favor by their acclaim of our deeds. We must
regulate the forces of nature, he believed, so altruistically that we
serve those who cannot possibly return our favors: we must conquer
nature in order to resurrect our ancestors, the ultimate act of
altruism.” (120)
“The essence of the American space program, its heart and soul, comes from ‘Star Trek.’” (122)
“An effective archetype works its magic subtly.” (123)
“Perhaps the essence of VR ultimately lies not
in technology but in art, perhaps art of the highest order. Rather
than control or escape or entertain or communicate, the ultimate
promise of VR may be to transform, to redeem our awareness of
reality—something that the highest art has attempted to do and
something hinted at in the very label virtual reality, a label that has
stuck, despite all objections, and that sums up a century of
technological innovation. VR promises not a better vacuum cleaner or a
more engrossing communications medium or even a friendlier computer
interface. It promises the Holy Grail.” (124)
“By the time he finished his last work, Wagner realized he was trying
to create another reality, one that would in turn transform ordinary
reality. The term he came to use was ‘a total work of art,’ by which
he meant a seamless union of vision, sound, movement, and drama that
would sweep the viewer to another world, not to escape but to be
changed. Nor could the viewer be a mere spectator.” (125)
“The Grail grants its full power only to those who can be touched by compassion.” (125-126)
“Wagner’s work remains to this day controversial among religious
people, including many artists and musicians who have strong religious
faith.” (126)
“As it evolves its art form, VR will have certain advantages over
Wagner’s ‘total work of art.’ Certain disadvantages might also plague
it where Wagnerian solutions might help.” (127)
“Because computers make VR systems interactive, they also allow the
artist to call forth greater participation from users. Whereas
traditional art forms struggle with the passivity of the spectator, the
VR artist finds a controlled balance between passivity and activity.
The model of user navigation can be balanced by the model of pilgrimage
and sacred awe.” (127)
“VR offers the opportunity to shift the
Western philosophy of presence….To be touched, we need to introduce
more sensory awareness. VR may develop a kind of feedback in which
presence includes an openness and sensitivity of the whole body.” (128)
“VR will enhance the power of art to transform reality.” (128)
“VR, with its augmented reality, allows a smoother, more controlled
transition from virtual to real and back. This capability, which may
frighten psychologists, will offer artists an unprecedented power to
transform societies.” (128)
CHAPTER 9 – VIRTUAL REALITY CHECK
“Are not all worlds symbolic? Including the one we naively refer to as
the real world, which we read off with our physical senses?” (130)
“Kant eliminated the notion of a pregiven world by locating orderly
patterns not in the found world, but in the architecture of the human
mind. The categories of the understanding (causality and substance)
along with the forms of intuition (space and time) mold the chaotic
givens of perception, forging an intelligible, communicable structure
of experience.” (130)
“’Our passion for one world is satisfied, at different times and for
different purposes, in many different ways. Not only motion,
derivation, weighting, order, but even reality is relative.’ Goodman’s
Ways of Worldmaking, in which he promotes the doctrine of irrealism,
seems a proper primer for the architects of virtual reality.” (131)
“Virtual worlds can threaten the integrity of human experience. We see
how technologies disrupt our biobodies in the examples of jet lag and
flight simulator sickness. The cyberbodies of virtual reality may
further upset an already precarious ontological balance. The modern
person’s typical body amnesia may deepen as Alternate World Syndrome
and Alternate World Disorder begin to appear. We need to learn how to
do occasional virtual reality checks. An unrestrained proliferation of
worlds cries out for sanity, for connection with reality, for
metaphysical grounding.” (131)
"Cyberspace seems to take place within the framework of real space." (132)
"The Doctor of Subtlety [John Duns Scotus (1266?-1308)] maintained that
the concept of a thing contains empirical attributes not in a formal
way (as if the thing were knowable apart from empirical observations)
but vitualiter, or virtually." (132)
"Although we may have to dig into our experiences to unveil the
qualities of a thing, Duns Scotus held, the real thing already contains
its manifold empirical qualities in a single unity, but it contains
them virtually--otherwise they would not stick as qualities of that
thing." (132)
"Duns Scotus could assign a merely virtual reality to some aspects of
experience because he believed that his primary experience already
exhibited 'real reality,' to use Plato's strange phrase." (133)
"Classical and medieval philosophy equated reality with the permanent
features of experience, and this naive realism anchored human beings in
the world. The medievals believed that the anchor held with all the
weight of an all-powerful, unchanging God." (133)
"A virtual world can be virtual only as long as we can contrast it with
the real (anchored) world. Virtual worlds can then maintain an aura of
imaginary reality, a multiplicity that is playful rather than
maddening." (133)
"A virtual world needs to be not-quite-real or it will lessen the pull on imagination." (133)
"The story relates a legend about the power of symbols while exhibiting that power." (133)
"Imagination allows us to use what we read or hear to reconstitute the
symbolic components into a mental vision. The vision transcends the
limits of our bodily reality, so that from the viewpoint of bodily
existence, imagination is an escape, even though imagination often
introduces new factors into our lives that sometimes cause us to alter
our actual circumstances." (133)
"For the most part, imagination receives in order to create." (134)
"When the artist takes her body with her through the mural painting, it
is our imagination (through the story) that completes her work of art."
(134)
"This inner map we make for ourselves, plus the layout of the software, is cyberspace." (134)
"In its simplest form, cyberspace activates the user's creative
imagination. As it becomes more elaborate, cyberspace develops
real-world simulations and then virtual realities." (134)
"If Schopenhauer is right when he says that we are incorrigibly
metaphysical animals, then this irrealism violates something we need
and puts a possible limit on virtual-reality construction." (135)
"How may we preserve the contrast between virtual and real worlds? How
can virtual realities preserve a built-in contrast with real or
anchored reality so that we will enjoy a metaphysical pull to create
and actively use our imaginations in cyberspace? What anchor can serve
to keep virtual worlds virtual?" (135)
"Virtual worlds evoke imagination only if they do not simply reproduce
the existential features of reality but transform them beyond immediate
recognition. The existential features of the real world to which I
refer include mortality/natality, carryover between past and future,
and care." (136)
"Because of the temporariness of biological
life-forms, a sense of fragility or precariousness pervades our real
world, frequently making suffering a default value." (136)
"These three features mark human existence and stamp experience with degrees of reality. They anchor us." (136)
"Actual cyberspace should do more; it should
evoke the imagination, not repeat the world. Virtual reality could be
a place for reflection, but the reflection should make philosophy, not
redundancy." (137)
"Cyberspace can contain many alternate worlds, but the alternateness of
an alternate world resides in its capacity to evoke in us alternative
thoughts and alternative feelings." (137)
"Any world needs constraints and finite structure." (137)
"The ultimate VR is a philosophical experience, probably an experience of the sublime or awesome." (137)
"The final point of a virtual world is to dissolve the constraints of
the anchored world so that we can lift anchor--not to drift aimlessly
without point, but to explore anchorage in ever-new places and,
perhaps, find our way back to experience the most primitive and
powerful alternative embedded in the question posed by Leibniz: Why is
there anything at all rather than nothing?" (137)
CHAPTER 10 - THE ELECTRONIC CAFÉ LECTURE