You are not isolated in your concerns or simple curiosity about VR and the concept of "reality" as a whole. The global importance of the issue is evident when it becomes the subject of a forum at Davos (Davos is famous as the host to the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum (WEF), an annual meeting of global political and business elites, which is often referred to as simply Davos.)
The picture above gives you a clue about the level of this Forum.
Here is what will be happening as we study pretty much the same subject in our class:
Note the participants...
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Open Forum Davos 2008
24. - 26. January 2008
The Open Forum Davos will include a section on "Virtual Worlds - Fiction or Reality?", which will take place on Saturday 26 January at the Swiss Alpine High School (SAMD). The section will include:
- Rafael Capurro, Professor, Information management and information ethics, Stuttgart Media University, Germany
- Florence Develey, Pastor, Switzerland
- Reid Hoffman, Chairman and President, LinkedIn Corporation, USA
- Philip Rosedale, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Linden Lab, USA
- Joseph Weizenbaum, Former Professor of Computer Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
More information on the Open Forum which is organized by the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches (FSPC) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) can be found at:
http://www.openforumdavos.ch/en/home/home.html
More Information of the section is provided at:
http://www.openforumdavos.ch/en/programm/virtual-worlds.html
2 comments:
I find the debate between real and virtual fascinating. Seems that there was some debate about whether or not YOU were real or virtual in class last week as you were introduced to us.
As Gritz and others have been discussing, it all seems to blur together and how we define it is complicated. Watching the Suzanne Vega video further reflected that. With the converging of so many media (simulcast online in SL, on YouTube, and on the radio) she was real somewhere, but virtual as well. Aren't characters in books, film and television "avatars?" I would even argue that many pop culture icons have blurred reality and fantasy and have become virtual beings (i.e. Britney Spears?) Odd, that so many of these pop music, film, tv and even toy images (i.e. Barbie and Bratz)are what are typically reflected in the choices of avatar design...
And that debate is really valid. Of course we don't dwell on it really on our daily life, lest we become schizophrenic. The person in the mirror (us?) the people on TV which might as well be dead, pop "stars" like you mention, are not only virtual in the sense that they are images, but in that they are totally fabricated by very complex media and marketing machines just as any other product we consume. Again, the medium IS the message, not the content of the bottle (which is of secondary importance) but the Coke bottle and all the connotations that go along with it.
Like the Sufi story that I related in class, the smuggler that crossed the border carrying merchandise on the camels, was not smuggling merchandise (content), but camels (the medium).
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