VR 101

Today we call many things “virtual.” Virtual corporations connect teams of workers located across the country. In leisure time, people form clubs based on shared interests in politics or music, without ever meeting face-to-face. Even virtual romances flourish through electronic mail. All sorts of hybrid social realities have sprung up on fax machines and computers, cellular telephones and communication satellites. Yet most of these “virtual realities” are not, in the strict sense of the term, virtual reality. They are pale ghosts of virtual reality, invoking “virtual” to mean anything based on computers. A strong meaning of virtual reality, however, ties together these looser meanings. A certain kind of technology—“VR” for short—has become the model for a pervasive way of seeing things. Contemporary culture increasingly depends on information systems, so that we find virtual reality in the weak sense popping up everywhere, while virtual reality in the strong sense stands behind the scenes as a paradigm or special model for many things. The first step in virtual realism is to become clear about the meaning of virtual reality in the strong sense of the term. We need to be clear about using virtual reality as a model because the loose or weak sense of virtual reality grows increasingly fuzzy as the face value of the term wears down in the marketplace, where virtual reality sells automobiles and soap. Car manufacturers use virtual reality in television commercials: “Climb out of that virtual reality and test drive the real road car that stimulates all five senses!” Newspaper cartoons and entertainment parks pump the popularity of virtual reality. Products on CD-ROM bill their 3-D (three dimensional) graphics as “true virtual reality.” AT&T welcomes you into its “virtual world.” The term now belongs to the universal vocabulary. But movies and seasonal television shows should not stretch VR to a thin vapor. Because virtual reality belongs to an important part of the future, we need to understand it not only as an undercurrent affecting cultural developments but also as a powerful technology in its own right.