PDF - The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality - University of Exeter

Chapter 6
From Interface to Cyberspace
When IBM personal computers first landed on office desks in late August 1981, some
cheered but most squirmed. A January 1983 issue of Time conveyed the general technoanxiety
in its cover story: Instead of the cover portrait of its customary "Man of the
Year," Time displayed a portrait of the "Machine of the Year," a desktop computer that
was the machine of the decade, if not indeed of the century.
The portrait showed a bleak scene sculpted by George Segal: standing on an oldfashioned
wooden table, a personal computer displays colorful charts and words. In
front of the computer, a chalk-white, life-cast, male figure sits on a wooden chair.
He slumps slightly, hands immobile on the knees, and stares passively at the screen.
Nearby, another desktop computer occupies a smaller table where a female life-cast
sits in a wicker chair. She relaxes cross-legged, coffee cup in hand, turning her line
of vision away from the screen. Both cast figures stand out white against a black
background where a single large white-framed window looks out on inky blackness.
The computers and furniture beam bright primary colors, while the surrounding atmosphere
seems claustrophobic. Mostly colorless and nearly empty, the room suggests
an oppressive banality in which humans are spiritless peripherals of their information
devices.
The initial computer phobia of the 1980s has ebbed away. In its place is a fear that
computers may have simply
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