What Is Real?
by ted2112, HSM guest contributor
“What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”
In the 1999 movie The Matrix, the character Morpheus proposed the question, “What is real?”
The movie tackled very large questions about the virtual world and how we interact with it. The Matrix showed us a world where the virtual world was the place where our minds lived and the “real” world was the place our bodies lived. This larger-than-life question has been tackled by many writers.
In the 2010 Syfy series Caprica, the virtual world or “V-World” was an economic playground where people paid to play and could live out their wildest dreams and fantasies. Gamers were masters of their own personal universe that was as real as the living world.
The novel Neuromancer by William Gibson first coined the word “cyberspace” in 1984. The story brilliantly shows us what can happen when the computer world becomes too entangled with what Morpheus would call the real.
So, what is real? We play in our own “V-World” called Home. In this world, we make and maintain very real friendships. Are they real? Yes of course. We don’t need anyone to tell us that they are or aren’t.
Disney’s virtual community, VMK, which ran from 2005 to 2008, imposed heavy chat restrictions. The idea behind the game play was that the gamers would be anonymous. A heavy line was drawn between what happened in the game and keeping it far away from the real world. Many words were filtered out, such as numbers and geographical places, and other terms considered to be identifiable or offensive.
What happened? A new language evolved that beat the censor programs, and people found a way to communicate in spite of the games rules. The language was seamless and although not created by any one individual, it spread uniformly throughout the game. Many new players to the game were confused at first, only to quickly pick it up. Creation of language is a key factor in determining culture and society.
Does a virtual world meet the definition of a community?
The word is defined in human terms as: “Communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs, risks, and a number of other conditions that may be present and common, affecting the identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness.”
Without a doubt Home meets and exceeds every one of these definitions.
Yet, are we bogged down by a traditional way of thinking that you have to be able to hold something in your hand to be real? When you listen to a MP3 file is that real? After all, it’s just ones and zeros. How can those two numbers bring us such pleasure and emotional response? You can’t hold an actual MP3 file in your hand, so how can it be anything? Is an e-mail any less real than a letter made of paper and ink? No, it is in every way real, because it’s the words and ideas that are the important thing. The paper and ink – like the bit and program – are simply the medium of the idea.
We are living in a new world. Technology has changed the very fabric of our lives; we are still struggling to define it, and that’s okay. Frankly, the world is standing on its ear right now, and still we connect and communicate ideas through so many mediums. An experience can be equally acute sitting in a movie theater watching light pass through plastic film as it would be if you were seated and watching it acted out on a stage live by human beings.
So what is real?
I guess the answer is that I don’t know; nothing – everything. My favorite color is orange, but who’s to say I see the color the same way you do? I bet we don’t. Can you see with my eyes, or think with my brain? There are billions upon billions of living things who have just as many different worlds, and thus, different perceptions.
(NorseNote: you actually can’t prove anything exists around you, because you’re seeing it as it was, not as it is. It takes the light from the sun eight minutes to reach the Earth; thus, if the sun were to be wiped out, none of us would know about it until a full eight minutes elapsed. Even for objects very close to you, it still takes the most miniscule fraction of time for the light to bounce off the object, reach your eye, and get processed by your brain. Thus, you can never actually prove that “now” empirically exists outside of your own perception. Try that one on for size.)
I feel real is what we make it. Like my orange, my real may be different from your real. You will never know my “real” world, or I yours. My value of what I experience has to be different from yours; otherwise the world would be a pretty boring place.
The difference between the world of the Matrix and ours is this – Morpheus was fighting to free our minds from the virtual and shepherd us to the real world, albeit a bleak world. We, on the other hand, use the virtual world to color our real, and as an escape from what we can sometimes perceive as a bleak world. We intermix those experiences to form something that ultimately enriches us, both individually and collectively.
September 3rd, 2011 by ted2112 | 21 comments
ted2112 is a writer and a Bass player that has been both inspired and takes to heart Kurt Vonnegut words...."we are here on planet Earth to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you different."
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“We, on the other hand, use the virtual world to color our real, and as an escape from what we can sometimes perceive as a bleak world.” This is a statement of personal opinion, not fact. It may be true for you, but it is certainly not true for everyone else.
And Olivia, Kudos to you for some amazing photos. Well done!
It does certainly raise an interesting question, though: how many people *do* use virtual reality as an escape from the bleakness of real life, or to enhance their lives in ways which wouldn’t be feasible in the real world? Lord knows, HSM’s pages alone are full of such stories…
I can see that my initial comment wasn’t understood, so let me try again. You raise some interesting questions, make some provocative statements, but none of them are really pursued. I feel that your article ends just where it should be starting.
As a form of communication, is Home real? Yes, of course. It’s a new means of communication, but it’s just as valid as phone, or letter.
Are the people we meet, and the relationship we form real? Well, five days ago we ran an article from tbaby in which she explains that her virtual self is basically an extension of her real self. Real world friendships have been born in Home. Real world marriages have been formed in Home. We’ve run articles on that too.
Is Home as a virtual experience real? This is a somewhat more interesting question, but I believe the answer is yes. The human brain, when watching images, be they real world, or motion picture, reacts as if we ourselves were experiencing that same reality.
Sorry to sound so negative, but I think your article would have been much stronger without the descent into subjectivity. Your closing statements illustrate what I mean. Home is also a game, and gaming is a form of recreation. Rest and relaxation are essential to life and not necessarily forms of escape unless someone states that they would rather game than do anything else, as some have done. That is when the warning flags go up. But as I pointed out above Home can also be a form of communication, and how we choose to use this new technology is up to us. Some may use it as a form of escapism yes, and have admitted such. But others may be trying to use it to unshackle minds.
I don’t interpret the feedback as negative so much as wanting to see more, which I completely agree with. The subject of this article is practically begging for expansion and discussion; indeed, the reality of virtual experiences is one of the core discussion topics throughout HSM.
Personally, I kinda like that it ends as a question (indeed, the article’s title itself is a question), designed to provoke discussion. Indeed, one of the key points in the article, if I’m reading it correctly, is that how we experience reality itself is largely subjective; thus it makes sense that the article would be approached from a very subjective viewpoint.
What I’m hoping for — and I’m curious to see if anyone will take the ball and run with it — are additional articles on this subject from various other points of view; I’d love to see your take on escapism versus recreation, for instance. You’re hinting at some great points that I’d love to see more detail on.
Great Article. Leaves you with a lot to think aboout for sure. NorseGamer, I like your question about escapism versus recreation……would love to see further what people think about this. Ted, perhaps you can write about this topic……
When dealing with percepted reality things can get very tricky.To the insane person that thinks aliens are communicating to them through a piece of tin-foil on their head it probably seems like reality to them.To throw some more confusion into your sunlight statement it should be kept in mind that our eyes only see visible light,there are other kinds we don’t see but isn’t what is going on in those bands of light just as much reality as what we see?Perceived reality in this example is like visible light but true reality would be the ability to see in every band of light.On Home the difference between perceived reality and true reality is just as great.I’m not advocating that everyone should know everything about everybody on Home but what I am saying is that we are blind about each other on Home except for what’s shown in visible light and that it shouldn’t be forgotten that there are other bands of light that can’t be seen but may conceal as much or more about ppl,even our friends,than is shown in the visible light.
I like your concept of visible light as it relates to home. In Home and in “real world” there is a visible self and an invisible self. You say the difference between realities in Home is just as great as the perception of the light spectrum, but I submit the difference is greater! In Home there is almost NO attribute of a person that can’t be faked. Home is an illusion which we all willingly accept as a form of reality. A “virtual” reality if you will. (I must apologize for that last sentence… I giggled when I wrote it. I know it’s horrible. LOL)
True,almost any aspect can be faked and if the person doing the faking is doing it very well there would be almost no way for the person being duped to know.Few ppl can remember every lie so sometimes they give themselves away,but if they played the part exceptionally well who would know?Even if you know the person Irl the way they act on Home can be far,far different than their normal personality.I had a real life friend that I introduced to Home way back in the “good old days” of EA poker.Well not long after,within a month or 2,this friend went all egomaniac and decided to embark on a career of treachery as well as virtual skirt chasing.Now which was the real person,the version I had been shown Irl for years or the 1 that I was shown on Home?Neither 1? I’m still not sure myself.
Here’s a couple of semi-related H.P.Lovecraft quotes. “Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal.” and “Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.”
LOL. Awesome. Ted, you propose a question for the subject of the article and you conclude with a shoulder shrug. Points for being honest!
I for one believe that there is such a thing as reality. There IS a “real”. Perception does not form reality; it just determines how you process it. Norse’s editorial addition reminds me of the sort of thought processes that claims that time itself is just a product of human measurement and does not exist. To claim that we can’t prove “now” exists is akin to saying that I can’t prove the “me” exists. Now doesn’t exist because any point of now immediately becomes the past. Any version of me… becomes the “me” of the past. Immediately. Just because we perceive the world of the a couple nanoseconds ago doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist now. The concept of “now” itself is flawed, not the reality that exists now. Is the world we perceive “now” real? To quote a former president. “It depends on what the meaning of the words ‘is’ is.”
This also reminds me a bit of Plato’s concept of the chair. Is a chair a chair because we define it a chair or is there an “ideal” chair that exists only conceptually that all physical chairs are compared to? Things we call chairs contain chair like qualities but none are truly chairs. This is a condenced summary of the concept… Look up the Allegory of the Cave for a more detailed look at this thought process.
We see reality in a certain way… you see your orange, I see mine. But there IS an orange that exists. Outside of perception. Outside of our understanding. It’s the orange that exists independent of human interaction and existence. When you die, when humanity ceases…. Orange will go on existing without us. Hey now were into the tree falling and sounds being made realm. lol
Human perception does not shape reality; it just determines how we see it.
How great is it that we are still discussing these things 2500 years later?
This reminds me of one of my favorite jokes: someone asks Descartes, at a dinner party, if he’d like a cup of tea.
He replies, “I think not.” And vanishes.
And in Home, that can actually happen!
Don’t let it happen to you on Home like it did on Star Trek Enterprise that you get lost in the holodeck. Woe
As for what it is and when it is how do you do know that someone is not dreaming us all? If so, time may mean nothing. Beware when the dreamer awakes.
I think, therefore I am.
We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams.
@NorseGamer: you made my day! I thought I’d heard all the Descartes jokes & that’s a new on. Still LOLROLF.
@cthlu93: perhaps the danger is when the faker first convinces him/herself that the fake is real?
I actually have a RL friend who sees slightly different color spectra with each eye.
I’ve noticed that most (many?) people in Home seem to use a fairly consistent avatar appearance or style: perhaps as close as they an come to their own—or their desired—appearance, or the protagonist of their current game, or monsters
…you get the idea.
When I started in Home, I tried to duplicate myself in my avatar, with poor results which were a combination of Home limitations and my own great lack of skill. After a while, I said, “Whatever.” and began amassing a range of often quite different appearing but mostly my same gender avatars. Not only do I have a wardrobe full, but also 20 or 30 pix of “retired” avatars. Now, after reading this article and the comments, I ask myself: “Why? Does it matter? Am I exploring some aspects of myself? Am I just playing around because I can?”
Home is supposed to be *fun* and now I’ll have to think.
Bayern_1867 when I’m talking about deceptive ppl how they appear is not an issue.It’s cool with me if you wanna make your avatar look like a boat,an alien,or opposite gendered.Maybe self-delusion is part of the problem and that would be something I’d be more sympathetic to but for the most part the ppl I’ve met who practiced habitual deception were doing it for some kind of perceived gain.Whether it was to attract someone who normally wouldn’t be attracted to a particular gender or to make themselves seem “cooler” to their “fam” bosses,or other things,these ppl knew what they were doing,knew that their deceptions would hurt others,and/or thought they would gain something by deceiving someone.Like I said,once you know deception has occurred you have to ask your self how important the situation is to you and how you will handle it.If someone were self-delusional and a friend of mine I’d have a long convo. with them and try to put an end to it.I’d try to make them understand that w/e they are is cool with me and that there wasn’t any need to deceive me.Of course if they were self-delusional and stuck to their deceptive story right from the start of our friendship I’m not too sure I’d ever find out they were deceptive in the 1st place.
Without offense meant toward anyone, I’d suggest that the constant wrangling over what’s “real” shows that our minds are not yet prepared to consider what a virtual world truly offers us. We still break it down into everyday concerns: Is this person trustworthy? Is this person who he/she claims to be? Am I popular enough? Where’s my trophy room?
I’m as guilty of this as anyone, because this is how Homo Sapiens, 30,000-odd years of society notwithstanding, still looks at the world around us. Given the gift of anonymity, some choose to let their baser instincts take over, while others try to compensate for their perceived deficiencies. The virtual world shines a truer light on our real personalities than the real world ever can, because we’re removed from the perceptions and rules that IRL interaction imposes, at least as long as we can avoid the banhammer.
None of this matters, because the real insight to be gained from virtual worlds lies in the collective consciousness of the community. As a species, we have evolved tools, laws and processes to further ourselves, something that we are uniquely capable of doing. That evolution occurred because collectively we looked at things and said, “We want this. This is good.” So there is a higher level of collective consciousness on display, and virtual worlds, unbounded by the cost and resource demands of physical reality, should be playgrounds for our imaginations.
If we want to use The Matrix as an example, Neo is the only one who gets it. Freed from the rules set upon his mind by the physical world, he exceeds every limitation believed to exist. He alone recognizes that there is a higher, unbounded path that has yet to be explored, one where concepts of physics do not apply.
Visiting the various regions of Home puts this collective consciousness on display. Throughout all regions, we see a need for basic rules and enforcement so that the system can operate. Collectively, we abhor chaos. But we also see ways to break the system, such as glitches, showing that there is a percentage of the population that wants more freedom than what is given.
One of the starkest contrasts exists between Japan and North America, where one community is drawn to lengthy, community-oriented events that encourage patience and socialization, while the other is drawn to shopping and single-player games. While there are exceptions to these generalities, the development direction of each Home, based on reams of data on what’s successful, speaks volumes about what motivates the collective.
There are reasons why these regions are different, and it has everything to do with where we go and what we do while we’re there.
Collectively, what I’ve seen in Home, the forums and the media sites, suggests that we want a place of peace and harmony, where people are free to enjoy themselves in a self-directed way. When the real world intrudes, either through politics, harassment, broken items or suggestive content, portions of the community rebel, because they see Home drifting away from the ideal that they had in their minds.
The lessons to be learned in Home reach much, much higher than how an avatar should dress, or whether we should be allowed to walk around with guns. Looking beyond those symptomatic complaints provides a great deal of illumination about what this community really wants, more than even the business data can reveal.
This brings up one of my favorite subjects, to which I’ve often referred with the admittedly not very eloquent phrase “failure of imagination.”
What is an avatar in Home? Essentially it’s a spark of consciousness projecting itself into a virtual world. But instead of accepting this alternate reality for what it is, most people want to immediately recreate the circumstances and limitations from which this artificial reality allows escape.
“What is your age/sex/location?” Now why does this seem to be the starting point for every conversation? I once was in Central Plaza while some young person ran around asking “Is there anyone here from [insert random city]. I could only shake my head. Given the opportunity to speak with people from all across North America, this young person was apparently convinced that he could only have a meaningful conversation with someone from his own neighborhood.
Now unless you’re in Home with the deliberate intention of finding a real life mate, as opposed to playing an online game with someone, or simply having a conversation with them, what do these things really matter?
This pervasive “failure of imagination” is just one hallmark of the Western Homes. There are others of course. Travel throughout the North American and European Homes, and your constant companions will be harassment, competition, and commercialism. And given that these Homes are but the sum total of all the individual sparks of consciousness which inhabit them, it’s an unavoidable conclusion that something profound is being revealed about the collective unconscious of Western civilization.
So after reading the article and all replys to date I have a few things that I would like to express. Mind you this is purely my own take on everything, I still think that it is an important idea to consider.
The use of the word real and virtual are used essentially to describe things pertaining to the world either outside or inside Home. My problem with this is that, and as much of the debate stems from, the word “real” needs to be clearly defined?
We say things like the real world, in real life, it is real because it is tangible. But I say we change our vocabulary to change our perceptions. What do I mean by this? Saying something is real or not real, we define it as something that exists, or doesn’t and something that happened, or didn’t. In order to nullify this debate, why not refer to the “real world” as the physical world.
By distinguishing this means that we no longer have to sacrifice authenticity or reality with things in the digital world. Think of how much this small change opens up.
An example: So lets say you have friends in the physical world. You talk on the phone, or email and often see each other in person. You share experiences, give advice, do favours for, get mad at, back up in times of need and have a mental and emotional connection to these people. The only difference with these friends and the ones you have on Home, is that you won’t have the physical presence most of the time. With the exception of meeting with friends from Home, your experience with them is limited to the use of a medium for communication: Playstation 3, Internet or maybe your phone. But you still have experiences with them, advice to give, favours to do, will back them up if needed and have an emotional and mental connection with them. The words on the screen are just as real as someone talking to you face to face(With the exception of censoring of course).
To conclude my thought here, I propose we either change our vocabulary or at the very least redefine the word real. To imply something is real because it exists in the physical world, or is not real for the opposite reason is outdated. Because if that were true, then everything that happens online is not real. The things we say don’t matter because none of it is real. I say, if something causes a reaction or affects something else, than it is real enough.
For the most part I agree,what a random person or someone who I only meet with once in awhile to game with is Irl is irrelevent to me.However if I’m hanging out with a group of friends every day for months on end we will probably,though not certainly,tell each other things about our real lives.Now let’s say 1 of these friends after a few months says something to the effect that they have a very ill child Irl and needs to find some cash quickly for medical needs and this group of friends decides to send that person a few bucks to help out.Then sometime later it becomes known that the person that asked for cash really has no kids and when confronted said something to the effect of “it was just a jk.” or “yeah it was a lie but isn’t my imagination great?” Wouldn’t the ppl that sent the cash have a right to be mad?This doesn’t happen everyday as it takes awhile to develop enough trust for the deceiver to talk the friends out of funds but con-artists are determined ppl,usually with lots of time on their hands.These are the things I’m getting at,not whether or not the person you just friended 10 min. ago lives in Washington state or Oklahoma.You’re right,most ppl on my friends list Idc if they are being truthful or not because it will have little to no impact on me.However I expect a little more truthfulness from those that are closest to me because what they tell me will impact me in 1 way or another.Of course you could blame the ppl that sent the cash for believing the story in the 1st place but to me that’s equal to blaming the victim.As for your same city dude,I encountered a similiar guy once long ago but his view was “why add ppl to my friends list if they live far away and we’ll never hang-out Irl anyways?”.Well anyone that ever had a pen-pal could answer that easily enough,face to face interaction isn’t necessary for ppl to enjoy talking to 1 another if it were phones would be only used for business.
Questions that we can ask ourselfs forever -- IF forever exisits! Time to us is real, but only by our human definition. They say time is acctualy maluble, warpable -- just like the surface of a lake. A planet’s gravitas has an effect on it’s own bubble of time so the denser and bigger it is, the slower time will flow around it (apparently). Same with dimentions, if dark energy and dark matter can trancend our “physical reality” then does that mean that we are essentaly cadged within our own boxed reality because of what we’re made of? And if so, how do we get out?
I belive in the idea that as physical beings we are teathered to our limited experiences and as such, can never truly escape far enough to experience anything other than our hard surface world. However, through the simple power of thought, we can imagine what lies beyond. And if all that makes us who we are is nothing more than simple electric pulces, then maybe we’re more at home in a place like Home than we are on this giant spinning ball of dirt and magma!!!