Day 5-Summary

Lecture- Day 5 Summary
Today we are looking at virtual philosophy
We looked at virtual reality. The matrix is a good example of this, a quote that was particularly interesting is “What is real, how do you define real?” by Morpheus in the Matrix.
Critique of virtual rationality
Plato’s main idea is that there are a bunch of people (prisoners) which are everyday people. His idea is that behind all the people are the essences of life. We can’t see them; they are the fire of life. When the fire cast shadows against a wall, that shadow is reality.
We looked into the idea that we are not getting the full side of reality.
Guy Debord said we are a society of spectacle, as people don’t like to live in reality, we are always looking for something else. We have come to expect our life to be mediated.
Umberto Eco believed in Hyer-Reality, he said thanks to all our extensions we can feel reality like we haven’t before.
Jean Baudrillard said that everything we do and feel is not really reality, it’s similar to reality.
William Gibson said cyberspace is important to us because it’s a way of information spaces.
Gilles deleuze and Felix Guttari summed up all this with the idea of “Becoming media”.Their thoughts can be explained in terms of the actual, the virtual and the real.
The idea of the internet being a virtual space has been argued as its part of an everyday life.
We watched a 4 Corners episode on Virtual worlds. Second life is the one the show focused on, its a place online where you can buy property, buy clothes and engage in a sex life!. On this site you can choose your appearance and talk to others.

To summarise the idea of virtual worlds is a very very interesting but disturbing part of new communication technologies!