--Neal Stephenson
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The History of Virtual Reality The Philosophy of Virtual Reality Virtual Reality and Literature/Art The Problem of Defining Virtual Reality |
The History of Virtual Reality
Thinking about "the history of virtual reality" immediately provokes the following basic, and yet fundamentally difficult, question: What is, literally speaking, the object of this history? Is it physical, symbolic, or both? As is explored in the Timeline, to a degree, the history of computing, the history of imaginary productions of technological thinkers and inventors, the history of graphical intefaces, the history of Science Fiction and Cyberpunk, and the history of film and special effects are all at stake as aspects of the history of virtual reality. How do we tell this history?
In thinking about what constitutes the object of VR's history, we become immersed in all of the critical issues developed on this page: The attempt to isolate (or the refusal to isolate) a tangible object that constitutes VR draws us directly into the debates around what defines virtual reality. This debate focuses heavily on the question of whether we should consider VR as utterly new and essentially attached to the new technologies of the Digital Era, or rather, bearing some discernable relationship to that which existed before it. Arguments for the former might point to the HMD (head-mount display) or the immersive/interactive activities on the internet (such as Active Worlds) as peculiar to and definitive of VR. Arguments for the latter might posit that VR must be thought of as a particular manifestation of general ideas that are necessarily attached to the longstanding tradition of Western philosophy, or similarly, that the experience of VR bears an essential relationship to what is, arguably, print culture's most powerful imaginative technology, literature, productive of an experience that is analogous to fiction, both of which make VR's analogies to past ideas, experiences, and technologies definitive of its definition rather than its novelty.
In the nearly decade-long aftermath of the publication of Howard Rheingold's version of the history of virtual reality, critical thinkers have become extremely anxious about two basic issues that Rheingold took for granted: a progressivist story of the technological history of VR and an undivided sense of optimism for VR's practical effects on as well as its symbolic meanings for individuals and culture alike. Robert Markley, for instance, takes a double stance on this issue. On the one hand he articulates his belief that progressivist histories unmask VR as an "imperialistic metaphor, a textual black hole" which "encourages Rheingold . . . to include anything [he] want[s] in [his] narrative." On the other hand, Markley articulates his other fear, which is that VR will be ensconced in a history that claims its essential difference from anything that came before it, particularly in terms of its symbolic meanings. It is important to Markley that VR's connections to the past, particularly to the Western hegemonic past, be recognized and understood. He writes, "virtual realities conserve and incorporate rather than overthrow the assumptions and values of a traditional, logocentric humanism, the Platonic division of the world into the physical and metaphysical in which ideal forms are valued over material content." How can we create a history of virtual reality that is sensitive both to the over-inclusive progressivist regime which Markley wants to avoid and yet also addresses his fear of producing the sense that VR is essentially exclusive?
Understanding VR as possessing a purely exclusive history, one can say, ironically attaches it to two powerful discourses of contemporary culture: Postmodernism and the consumer market of the new technologies. Should we consider VR as an extension of postmodern theories of the 'new'? Or perhaps as a perverse counter-extension of these theories, in which there is no critical reflection on the complexities brought to bear on postmodernism during its cultural reign? As far as discourses of the consumer market are concerned, should we defend ourselves against what can be construed as a cheap markup of the Romantic notions of genius and innovation, both deployed in contemporary culture simply to push products?
If the critical practice of historicism is one way to begin to address this issue, as Katherine Hayles argues, then we must think carefully about how to accomplish this task in the present tense. In other words, if the "historical sense" entails our recognition that the past is fundamentally different from the present and can be understood only in terms of its own context, then how do we historicize the present tense, which a historicization of virtual reality definitely demands at this point? Further, if we turn to the New Historicist practice, in which context is unlimited as well as constantly shifting and and disappearing, what happens to the question of virtual reality as history? What is the value of bringing the concept of indeterminacy to bear on VR? What allegories or metaphors does this practice enable?
Another way of creating a history of VR is through the process of drawing together the historical with the 'new' as a source of positive meaning, a sign that VR really does make sense, as this quote from Rheingold attests: "Laurel was the one who first pointed me toward the past, to the origins of drama, as a place to find the framework for making sense of the future. The machinations of imagineers in Anaheim and Kawasaki are only the latest, most technology-intensive, perhaps least self-aware manifestations of what may be a very old cultural tradition indeed. . . . the connection between ecstasy and cyberspace might be older than anyone suspected. The future of cyberspace might be decodable only by those who understand its past." It seems timely, however, that we pause on the word "might" in Rheingold's last sentence. Whereas Markley explicitly asks us to weigh our losses when we attempt to isolate VR from history, Rheingold implicitly brings up the question of what is lost when history and VR are yoked together. In tracing a meaningful relationship between the imaginative, immersive, and interactive forms of the past with those of the present moment, do we draw the conclusion that the future of these imaginative forms is decodable? Or must we in this case also pay close attention to the degrees of difference, however seemingly mild, between past and present, such that the future is both familiar and unknown? The question then becomes, how do we preserve an element of the unknown in VR under the domesticating powers of historical analogy?
The Philosophy of Virtual Reality
Critical thought about the relationship between virtual reality and philosophy asks us to consider this question carefully: Is it valuable to consider the symbolic meanings of virtual reality, such as the metaphors and allegories it enables or disables, or the analogies to other aesthetic objects, experiences, and theories it summons? If so, then how and to what degree? For many critics, virtual reality as a concept exceeds its power as a technology hundredfold and must be carefully considered in these terms. Early work in this area by Brenda Laurel, Howard Rheingold, and Sherry Turkle, for instance, was largely optimistic, understanding VR to produce metaphors of democracy, the value and power of communion, and intense sensory experience that led to catharsis and (emotional/intellectual) growth.
Virtual Reality and Literature/Art
Further, in thinking about the relationship between VR and literature, it is important to consider whether literature is constitutive of (rather than merely mimetic of or imaginatively playful with the already firm concept of) what we understand to be virtual reality. In other words, does the technology of VR create literary versions of it, or does imaginative literature create our understanding of what this technology could or should be? Finally, this latter issue provokes the crucial and related question of whether virtual reality is analogous to, or even structurally indistinct from, the experience of fiction—whether VR can or should be understood as delivering what we consider to be the effects of imaginative experience associated with literature, only to a more extreme degree.
The Problem of Defining Virtual Reality
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Virtual Fiction
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