PDF - The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality - University of Exeter

turning the handle. If my heart and whole body is not in my work, my work will
become joyless. When my work is joyless, how do you think the water will taste?"
We in the West do not accept the Taoist dilemma between clever-minded alienation
and wholehearted brute labor. We opt for something in between. We have converted
occasional devices into appliances, integral parts of the daily routine. Sure, we have
our Luddites and machine manglers, but, as a rule, we want to have our Zen and do
motorcycle maintenance, too. Our technology summons our passion. We get involved
in things in and through the technology. In this respect, we resemble the citizens of
Samuel Delaney’s novel Nova who are outfitted with sockets, one in each wrist and
one at the base of the spine. The sockets provide the psychoneural energy for running
everything from vacuum cleaners to factories or starships. Instead of removing people
from their work, our technology connects us to our work, putting us directly into our
activities. Devices attach to every aspect of life, creating a technological culture. Our
marriage to technology embraces production, transportation, and communication.
When technology becomes an interconnected system, at some point we sit down
and address the system itself; we program it. When a technology covers a number
of particular tasks, linking them into a system, then the next step is to gain a vantage
point where we can obtain information about the system and can call programs for the
system to run. No longer a set of discrete machines, our appliances communicate with
one another and function through information. A cybernetic infrastructure coordinates
instruments that measure everything from weather and traffic flow to banking transactions.
We feed input into the system, which then constantly feeds information back to
us. Our selves plus the machines constitute a feedback loop. Information brings into
existence the information age, and the holy shrine of our era becomes the computer
screen. Then we have the next stage of our marriage to technology. The newlyweds
begin to influence each other. We go from appliance to interface.
What is an interface? Today the term interface works as a noun or a verb. Its
meaning ranges from computer cables
75