Lecture 5 - Virtual Philosophy

This lecture was on Virtual Philosophy. Initially it touched on the ground breaking movie the Matrix. The point of this was that our experiences in life are really only just electrical signals interpreted by our brain. If these signals or the receivers of them could be manipulated, then our ‘reality’ can be altered. It also examined several academic and philosophical perspectives on ‘reality’.

The Screen Age really began with the advent of cinema a century ago, but even before that there were technological advances that were setting the stage for virtual reality. These were the telegraph - which prompted the laying of cables around the globe so we could communicate; telephones - which were a precursor to the Internet communications we have today; the phonograph - which led to the development of cassettes, records, CDs and other sound-recording devices; the radio - which allowed communication to happen without the need for wiring; cinema – which allowed ‘captured’ vision to be available to the masses; and television. All these components have converged in Virtual Reality: a system that enables one or more users to move and react in a computer-simulated environment.

The lecture then touched on the various elements of VR such as vision, sound, touch, taste and smell then some of the problems of VR. The most interesting of these I thought was the concept that VR could lead to a desensitisation / devaluing of 'real-world' experience.