Week 6: Virtual / Actual
First of all, The garden of forking paths was an awesome story. For one, if we consider that the novel described within the story prefigured hypertext and that hypertext provided users with many variations and possibilities, then the garden alluded to in the story mirrors what is now offered over the web. Second, the story allows us to consider that every virtual experience/possibility is being actualized by someone somewhere, even though any one person may not experience them all. So the story, again, mirrors something of reality. However, what is described in The garden of forking paths is much more complex than the internet. And I briefly want to draw out this point.
In short, the internet offers only a set amount of possibilities; however, in The garden of forking paths, every imaginable possibility exists, so if we consider what the story is really about?the actual existence of all possibilities?then the internet looks quite boring. This is why I am now calling for a device that generates infinite possibilities for us. I don?t know how it would exist, but if it could draw on movements happening within the internet and then produce, of its own power, multiple conceivable responses, possibilities would exist on the web of which no individual had ever seen?the web would become a frontier for exploration. The web would be the new moon. I better call Stanford. Anyone want to help me create this monster?
Levy does, however, explain that ?virtualization? becomes ?the transformation of a reality into a collection of possibilities.? (26-27) So in this sense, I suppose, possibilities are always growing as virtualization grows. Although not infinite, the world as we know it is growing as a result of virtualization; perhaps this is as close to The garden of forking paths as we will get. Nevertheless, Baudrillard?s point is well taken here: the world of the virtual (and, in fact, all simulations) do actually become real to us. And as Levy points out in his article, the actualization of possibilities in the virtual world is a shared creation, a community act. So we can then conclude that ?virtualization? becomes a collective reality.
This idea that we are all contributing to our own realities, however, seems often hyped or glorified in many of these texts when it should not be in my view; each individual in a community has always shaped other individual?s notions of the real. There is no reason, then, necessarily to point out, as Levy does, that the actualization of possibilities is a community act. Nevertheless, to play devil?s advocate with myself: the difference, though, is that the shaping of the reality experienced in the virtual world is a less carefully controlled affair than the shaping of the reality of the ?real world? since the whole world can be engaged together in making virtual experiences ?real? and thus in contributing to the collective reality. Additionally, as Dr. Silva points out, virtual worlds often seem ?better than reality? (50), and may, in fact, be better in a lot of ways, so they might, then, deserve the glorification implied by so many articles.
Quickly, I want to connect discussions about the global sharing and shaping of reality with a great Marshall McLuhan quote from ?Understanding Media,? which might illustrate the discussion in a new way. McLuhan discusses the world?s technological interconnectedness and asserts that a denial of interconnectivity and inter-involvedness would equate to absurdity. He states, ?In the electric age, when our central nervous system is technologically extended to involve us in the whole of mankind and to incorporate the whole of mankind in us, we necessarily participate, in depth, in the consequences of our every action. It is no longer possible to adopt the aloof and disassociate role of the literate Westerner. The Theater of the Absurd dramatizes this recent dilemma of Western man, the man of action who appears not to be involved in the action.? Accordingly, when we recognize the virtual as real, we must also recognize all people, all "others," as real, but not just real, but as also tied intimately to us, to our perceptions and our realities.
Finally, we must consider Deleuze?s critique of Leibniz?s architectural theology. To briefly summarize the reading: Deleuze explains that contradictions disallow possible worlds so that Adam as sinner and Adam as non-sinner cannot both exist. Reason here is frustrated, but the very confines imposed by logic organize God?s rules to the game of existence. Hence, Deleuze details Leibniz?s theology and states that ?he [God] turns our relative world into the only existing world, a world that rejects all other possible worlds because it is relatively ?the best.? God chooses between an infinity of possible worlds, incompossible with each other, and chooses the best?? (60).
I would like to suggest we take the ideas within Leibniz?s writings and apply them to the virtual world so that we imagine that the virtual online world IS the real world. If we do this imaginative work, then what becomes immediately apparent is that the online world provides multiple possibilities becoming actualized while, at the same time, each user can only actualize one; so if the God of the virtual world IS the user, then the user?s role, like God?s in Leibniz?s theology, becomes to choose the best possible world according to his/her individual rules of play. And here we wrap back around to the story of The garden of forking paths wherein the individual is only aware of the world in which he/she resides, even though other possible existences may actually exist. So the conclusion might be, if we still conceive of ourselves as the God of Leibniz?s theology, that the multiplicities of virtual worlds allow us to choose to be a different God of a different world every day. Pretty cool.