Articles Read
Eco, U. (1983). Travels in hyperreality. In U. Eco. Collection of essays: Travels in hyperreality (pp. 3-58.). Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
Stone, S. (1995). Split subjects, not atoms. Or how I fell in love with my prosthesis. In C. G. Gray (Ed.), The cyborg handbook (pp. 393-406). New York: Routledge.
Sanes, K. (2002). Virtual realities: Then & Now. Available online at http://www.transparencynow.com/lascaux.htm
Article Summaries
Eco, U. (1983). Travels in hyperreality. In U. Eco. Collection of essays: Travels in hyperreality (pp. 3-58.). Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
From various Museums to Castles, from Disneyland to Marinelands, and to the supernatural, the author guided us through a journey into hyperreality. It seems that for museums, though many of what we see are reproductions, but we at least believe these reproduces reality in an absolute sense. However, disneyland is fantasy that is absolutely reproduced. But “once the ‘total fake’ is admitted, in order to be enjoyed it must seem totally real” (p.43). The author raised the issue of what counts as authentic. His article successfully presented us instances “where the American imagination demands the real thing and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake; where the boundaries between game and illusion are blurred, the art museum is contaminated by the freak show, and falsehood is enjoyed in a situation of ‘fullness’.”(p.8)
Stone, S. (1995). Split subjects, not atoms. Or how I fell in love with my prosthesis. In C. G. Gray (Ed.), The cyborg handbook (pp. 393-406). New York: Routledge.
The author started the article by describing her experiences of falling in love with prosthesis. The author believed that with the development of more sophisticated technologies, people are becoming harder to track bs y dissolving, fragmenting, --“by being many persons in many places simultaneously, by refusing to be one thing, by choosing to be many things.” (p.400) This fragmentation and multiplicity characterize communities mediated by technological prosthetics of presence. She argued computers were traditionally viewed as tools, but now they carry a play ethic—Computers are “loci, places, forums, agoras, arenas—arenas for social experiments, for community and its discourses, for the messy evolution of prosthetic sociality driven by specifically located knowledges, needs, and productions.” (p.401-402)
Sanes, K. (2002). Virtual realities: Then & Now. Available online at http://www.transparencynow.com/lascaux.htm
This piece started with the description of the caves of Lascaux. The author told us that the caves demonstrated that long before the beginning of urban civilization, the human race was creating imitations of reality. Such imitation realities have taken all kinds of forms, such as stories, paintings, and theatrical productions. But all of them have provided “ports of entry” that allowed audiences to physically and psychologically immerse themselves in the situations and environments that have been portrayed.
The author believed that we do so because we seem to have a built-in impulse to create world replicas, so that to transcend the limits imposed by life, to overcome the “tyranny of actulity”, and achieve a kind of freedom afforded by the imagination.
I like this quote, “Much of the history of civilization is the story of how we have used these forms of representation to create a “human world” that is richer and more interesting than the world of nature.”
I think people are doing this because they want to express their feelings or emotions!
What is the difference between a “real” and a “virtual” experience?
To answer this question, we should first define what is real and what is virtual, which is hard. I think “Being real” means three levels of realness. One is sensational/physical real. Another is historically real, which refers to things that actually happened or are happening in this world. And the last is psychologically real. Disneyland or Museum of Magic and Witchcraft are not historically real, but is sensational real. Things happened in the history are all historical real. Then, there are things that are neither sensational real nor historically real, but the person who is experiencing it feels it is real. For example, when people are playing MUD, they are only interacting with paragraphs of text, but they have a feeling of authenticity.
I think the difference between a “real” and a “virtual” experience is: Real experience possesses all of the three levels of features. However, in “virtual” experience, it is not historically real. It can be only sensational real, only psychologically real, or both.
For me, psychologically real matters most. As long as it is psychologically real to me, I don’t care whether it is real or virtual.
Honestly, I don’t know the answer to this question! Following my previous logic, if a student is learning history on one historically real event, but he actually has no physical or psychological associations with the event, is the event real or virtual to him?
Questions For Discussion
What is real? What is virtual?
What is virtual in the reality? What is real in the virtuality?
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