Post 01 Reading Response

Allegory of the Cave

The first virtual reality application is to extend the limit of human body ability, but not manipulating or distorting it. To me, it sounds more like a hyper-realistic practices, instead of “virtual”. Though the interpretations of “Allegory of the Cave” varies for decades, the fundamental question we have been debating on is what reality is? If the part of reality is not comprehensible with the given human knowledge and ideology, will it sound like a fact to us? Just like how Morpheus told Neo: “Most people are not ready to be unplugged”, it is almost our nature to protect our own reality, which allows to tell what is real and what is not.

Current VR tech can free lots of human physical and social boundaries at a certain level, which enable disabled people to feel walking/running in the VR world, allows people with Acrophobia to play roller coaster, and reduced the bias from gender/races/ages with virtual avatar. Nevertheless, I still disagree with any of the above are “virtual” or “fake”, but instead, I think VR tech is just an advanced media which brings more information and new contents to the audience. The reality is already “virtual” for long enough of time (ex. What we are following on social media are the delicately fabricated persona, but we tend to believe it, even part of it).

The red pill, or the blue pill?

sep 10, 2019