Reality is a peculiar thing. On an individual level, everyone�s reality is tainted by perception and situation. One person�s reality is different to another�s. But on a larger scale, reality is something that is there no matter what our perception, no matter what we make of it or think of it. Reality is what is objective, something that exists in the real world, that exists in fact, and is not merely an idea or an opinion or a viewpoint, for all of those are subjective. Of course, knowing what is objective and how things exist objectively has become a hotly debated topic. How can we envisage what something would be like without our scrutiny? As Victor J Stenger wrote in his paper Postmodern Attacks On Science And Reality:
�Humans lack access to any mechanism by which we can learn the truth about an objective reality that exists independent of human thought processes�
This viewpoint is very much a product of the postmodern movement, which arose in the 1960�s and challenged many wideheld preconceptions of consciousness, reality and space. Many of the ideals behind the movement were almost spiritual. �The decade brought forth audacious critiques of the modern worldview, attacks on all belief systems. Strange new ideas about such matters as consciousness and sanity and objective truth entered the public dialogue� (Truett-Anderson, 1992).
Postmodernism has helped us to recognise many new facets of our existence and to explore new planes and ideas, both in theory and scientifically. It has brought us the discovery of the atom and quantum physics. However there are many ideas that cannot be measured, proved, or be experimented with, and this has led many scientists, who believe in evidence, experimentation, and proof, to dismiss many postmodernists as a group of daydreamers.
Whichever stance is taken, postmodernism is very much about re-evaluating reality and our ideas of consciousness. It is interesting to see that in the present day, much of the science and technology that now exists in this postmodern era is being used by people to further remove themselves from objective reality and it is also re-defining our subjective realities.
The world is a much smaller place than it used to be. It is wrapped tightly in cords of telephone wire, forming a great network of information and communication that binds us all together and brings all countries closer together. Of course, not every single country has access to the information super highway and the Internet, but all the major first world countries are very much wired up to the web. There are exceptions across the world� China�s government seems almost nervous at the prospect of free information and has even sentenced people to jail for misuse of the internet. In North Korea, internet access has only recently been available but it is still tightly regulated. Many other second and third world countries have monopolised internet access and some countries, such as Burma, impose total censorhip. (Macionis, Plummer, 2002) The Internet is not only a tool of communication for businesses and corporations, but is almost a world of it�s own. It is used by Within cyberspace people communicate, share information, talk, chat, form friendships and relationships, sexually gratify themselves, exchange music and pictures, form communities and forums, hold discussions, debates, conferences, write letters to loved ones, go shopping, order food, play games, work, fax, phone, read, find out news� there has been a massive shift in the power of the internet in the last few years� the big businesses are realising that there is a wealth of custom online, and are refining their business to cater to that. The more popular the Internet, the more useful it becomes and the more useful it becomes the more popular it gets. But underneath this sprawling cyberspace universe, are there darker ramifications? Are things changing in the real world as a result? Our modern industrial society is increasingly IT aware� and the Internet is beginning to pervade much of our life. Every product, every business, every movie, every brand� they all have their own website. Many businesses and many services exist almost solely on the web. Many homes have Internet access, and for those that don�t, Internet caf�s exist to cater for their needs. We are a people increasingly allured by this immaterial world called cyberspace. A world with no substance, except in digitalised form. A world where the rules of reality do not apply. Geographical boundaries do not exist, communication with someone the other side of the world is as easy as with someone using the computer terminal next to you. If you wish to see the exhibits at a Tokyo gallery while you are in London, you can easily access their website just as quickly as you could access the site of a London gallery. Geography is meaningless, countries which we grew up being taught are thousands of miles away and unreachable except by an incredibly long, expensive, inconvenient and not always pleasurable airplane flight are now available whenever we want them, at the click of a button. Countries are brought closer together; many people now do speciality shopping overseas, with all the ease of doing it within our own country. People are not even tied to their own personalities once they enter this great wide universe of cyberspace. A lonely, mild mannered middle-aged man can become a sarcastic, witty and popular schoolboy, exchanging jokes and discussing sexual conquests in an online community. People are not even tied to their own genders or sexuality; there really is total freedom to be whatever you want to be. There are no human beings online. Only identities. There is in fact, nothing in cyberspace which is objective. Everything that is there has been put there by someone. There is no gravity, no nature, no weather, it is an entirely man made phenomenon.
Is this perhaps what many people find so appealing? The unreality? The way much of what we have been taught as absolute truth and reality is now subverted? I remember growing up, my childhood friend Stephen was grounded for making an absurdly expensive international phone call. The severity of his deeds was repeatedly lambasted upon him by his angry and out of pocket mother. But then, two years later (and still terrified of international phone calls) our friend Michael had his family PC hooked up to the magical �internet�. We�d be round his house on weekends, in disbelief at how a single autonomous computer, previously only ever used as a glorified typewriter was now a conduit for conversation between ourselves and people from America, Belgium, and Australia� and all at the cost of a local phone call! We marvelled at the speed in which the words we typed and received were flashed from one continent to another in a matter of milliseconds. We were in awe of how Mike was able to play cards with a friend he had made in New Zealand (in my young eyes, there was no cooler accolade than transcontinental friends� friends from the next neighbourhood were cool enough, but the other side of the planet? Unbelievable!) and we giggled endlessly at the adult images we were able to view, without parent or shopkeeper to keep us shy! It was almost magical, and it went against so many of our pre-conceptions. The Internet has grown a hundred fold since then and just about everyone seems to be getting a slice.
But has this fascination got out of control? The reality of our society now is very different to how it was before the Internet. Many fragile preconceptions are, if not gone, re-thought; and cyberspace is now a part of many many people�s lives. But is this dangerous? Are people losing themselves in this unreality? Are online activities and communities becoming more important and meaningful than real-world issues? With the Internet a place where communities thrive and people can throw off the shackles of personality and sexuality, if they so choose, I believe that many are finding the Internet to be a haven from the world, from reality. Your personality can exist free from the constraints of your body; your spirit and mind can exist within an electronic network while the body sits slumped and stagnating like a parked car. Is it possible that we could transfer a person�s self to something electronic, thus negating their need for a body, their need for a vessel?
�Separating the mind and spirit from the body allows the possibility that the essential �I� could be translated into something less fallible, less terminal than the human body�. And many believe that such a place for the I is emerging on silicon and in cyberspace� (Jordan, 2000, pg185)
This idea is also explored in the 1999 Japanese anime �Serial Experiments Lain� which deals with the boundaries between the real world and the �wired� (cyberspace) becoming blurred, and how people are able to connect to or from the �wired� without the need for external devices, such as computers and a telephone line. The wired is portrayed as an upper layer to the real world, a universe within that even has it�s own God, the scientist who created the new seventh protocol which blurred the lines that separate the world from the wired, a man who killed himself so that he could abandon the flesh and live as an omnipotent Deus inside the wired. Much of the series is infused with facts and conspiracy theories relating to the actual creation of the Internet, and it�s depiction of the wired as an unstable unreality seemed very much based on our current Internet. The series opens with a young girl, Chisa, committing suicide so that she could live only inside the wired. �There was no reason for me to stay in the real world any longer. In the real world, it didn't matter if I was there or not. When I realized that, I was no longer afraid of losing my body.� Events of the series really begin when the dead girl begins emailing her classmates, sparking fear and a rapidly escalating mystery as to how the real world and the wired are linked. The series poses many questions and challenges the viewer to rethink they way they see the Internet. The possibility that the human mind can live on within a computer and without any assistance from the body is explored further in the 1999 film The Matrix, in which all of humankind do not really exist in the reality which we believe to be true, but are instead held prisoner within millions upon millions of capsules, their bodies and brains wired up to �the matrix�, an immense computer program that is effectively a simulation of reality. They believe the world in which they exist is real, but it is nothing more than a computer program. When in disbelief at the news, the recently emancipated hero of the movie, Neo, who has been re-wired into the matrix by the man that orchestrated his release, a man called Morpheus, in order to teach him about the unreality of this program, Neo utters: �You mean� this isn�t real?� Morpheus replies: �If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.� This statement explains how it is possible that a human mind can be fooled by electrical impulses into seeing and feeling something that isn�t there. Chemicals can also affect the brain and it�s activity, upsetting nerve endings and neutral paths so that the mind hallucinates and reality becomes warped and bizarre. The idea that we could one day control the exact levels of the warping of reality for our own ends is not a difficult one to conceive.
Although we do not plug our brains directly into a computer program when we go online, we do connect our minds up to it. With the advent of webcams, microphones, realistic computer games, the unreality of the internet is looking more and more� real. People who feel alone from society are joining new societies online, and are using these to fill the void they may feel, but these communities have no basis in the real world, many people in an online community will never meet. Absorbing oneself in this on line world means they are not dealing with their problems in the real world, and engaging in anonymous and possibly candid relations online, with which consequence is not an issue, may have �deleterious consequences on morality and ethics off-line�(Jones, 1998, pg37) Shunning the real world in order to socialise and live through a computer, in a world with no boundaries, although liberating, can also be dangerous to a person�s mind, if they indulge without moderation. Taking on multiple personalities is almost a form of self imposed schizophrenia, and will the other personalities seep into the real world? Serial Experiments Lain touches upon this issue. The heroine of the title, a shy and quiet girl named Lain, has an alter-ego on the �wired�, a brash, loud, upfront and malicious girl known as �Lain of the wired�. It is not long before this alter-ego begins to meddle in reality and cause problems. Another persona altering quality of the internet is the content. Because everything is put forward by other people, and is hard to regulate, there are countless sites dealing with utter degradation, pornography, rape, snuff films, corpses, videos of shootings� a person can become disturbed or desensitised quite easily if they spend enough time online, and they chose to view certain material.
Even for those of us who do not use the internet and are not lost within it, there are other ways that reality is being altered. With the world becoming a smaller place and people more and more informed of what is going on across a wider region, and in an age where communication networks cover the globe, information from all corners of the earth is hurled at us from our televisions, newspapers and radios. Events in America, in the Middle East, murders in Australia, famine in Africa, we are suffering from information overload. People are now so desensitised to talk of natural disasters and ethnic cleansing and government corruption that they change channel, turn the page, switch off their minds and don�t even process the information. People only listen to news that engages them or that they want to hear. They now have access to so many opinions and articles that they can only listen to viewpoints they wish to listen to, which will accelerate their own opinion regardless of it�s basis in reality. With so much information coming from all over the globe there is no way we could check up on the news we receive and no way to check the validity, integrity or credibility of the information. Much of the news we receive has been broadcast by corporations or government agencies, and they may be censoring or exaggerating news stories for their own ends. Propoganda is still rife and it is hard to tell which reports we read or hear or see are objective and which are merely agendas.
��the public must be barred from managing of their own affairs and the means of information must be kept narrowly and rigidly controlled.� (Chomsky, 1997, pg6)
Many states still filter news in an attempt for it to have the right effect on their people, especially during times of war or conflict, when public support is needed. During the First World War, British intelligence concocted tales of atrocities by the Germans, such as �Huns ripping the arms from Belgian babies� in order to gain public support for the war and also to try and win round powerful allies such as America. Many people are aware of much of this information which points fingers at governments and states, and even facts from history which prove media manipulation and corruption, yet they all roll off the backs of the people and become lost in the waterfall of information that many have learned to ignore or filter to satisfy their own ideals.
So has reality been abolished? In a sense yes. Most certainly within cyberspace, which is a place where reality has no function. And also with filtered and propaganda news channels, where every word can twist the truth or can be used to further an agenda, where certain facts are held up and others swept under the carpet, and what we receive is a version of reality so twisted that it doesn�t even resemble reality anymore. When someone relays a situation to you through words or pictures, when you recieve information second hand, there is no difference between a truth and a lie. Reality is being warped in other ways, the shrinking of the world owing to global communication networks, the uselessness of geographical borders when we can use the internet and when travel is becoming better and faster, they way computers are transferring important information and documentation down to nothing, the very essence of weightlessness� Reality is still there for anyone who wants to go out and find it, and shall remain so until we are all bodiless souls flying around an electronic silicon world� but sadly, most people seem instead to want nothing more than to believe what they are told and to hear what they like, Chinese whispers and warped news stories. Reality then, is fading. We are all lost within our own self constructed worlds.
-Dan Pryor
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Bibliography
Chomsky, Noam (1997) Media Control, The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda. New York: Seven Stories Press
Heim, Michael (1998)Virtual Realism. New York: Oxford
Jones, Steven G. (1998) Cybersociety 2.0 Revisiting Computer Mediated Communication And Community. London: Sage
Jordan, Tim. (2000) Cyberpower, The Culture And Politics Of Cyberspace And The Internet. London: Routledge
Macionis, K and Plummer, J. (2002) Sociology, A Global Introduction. London: Prentice Hall.
www.imdb.com
http://www.cyberia-anime.com/
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