Week 6: Virtual/Real
Silva, Defining the Virtual
Beginning from the ontological split between Platonic and Aristotelean perspectives, Silva tries to resolve what she argues is a false virtual/real dichotomy. Notably, Plato's perspective assumes that anything that is not the ideal 'real' is inferior to it. (A fun but useless point of argument here would be to debate whether the 'ideal real' is the 'real' or the "virtual.") According to Silva, it's important to note that all reality is mediated. So, in a sense, everything "real" is "virtual." But Silva uses this to gesture towards the necessary collapse of this binary terminology. In connecting the concept of mobility with virtu-reality, Silva uses examples from THE MATRIX and THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR. In THE MATRIX, the boundary between the virtual and the real is mediated (hindered, gated) by mobility. Conversely, THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR encourages mobility and a tight interaction between virtuality and reality. After explaining the Platonic position on virtureality, Silva explains Aristotle's response, which is a move towards potential, or being "in-between" states. This is sort of like quantum mechanics, I think, in that one thing can have multiple properties (or states) and can't be neatly classified with binary divisions. Fast forward through Leibniz (it's not the virtual or the real; it's the singular derived from the multiple), Borges (on the contrary, nothing is singular, it's a sum of multiplicities), Deleuze (everything is virtual and real at the same time; what we should talk about is actualization/transition/potentiality), and non-places (spaces of juxtaposition [Foucault], contextuality [Serres], and flows [Castells]).
Poster, Theorizing the Virtual
He has a great critique of Baudrillard, when he points out that "Baudrillard's effort to theorize VR is his inability to recognize practices that involve assemblages of humans and machines and account for their differential realizations" (p. 136). Poster further critiques Baudrillard for setting up a dualist ontology through his concept of simulacrum, that "simulations rely upon their difference from representations." Poster also critiques Derrida's perspective on the real/virtual, claiming that Derrida himself critiques our conceptualizations of virtuality, reality, and materiality, without making any concrete gestures towards how we can improve. Also implicit in Poster's reading of Derrida is Derrida's call for what sounds like an unhelpful taxonomy (or, at least, a division of) virtualization technology, as well as a technologically-deterministic perspective.
Levy, The Nature of Virtualization
Looks like Levy is writing against Baudrillard, Virillio, and perhaps others. I've only seen a couple pages of the greater work this is derived from, though, so don't hold me to that. Levy is taking the concept of actualization and trying to push it (pull it?) to get to his idea of virtualization. The concept of virtualization is kind of like a network approach to actualization. It might be really fruitful to think of virtualization as being a combination of Leibniz and Borges (see above, in my Silva comments). This probably isn't too far of a stretch, given that Silva reads Deleuze as a step after Leibniz and Borges, and Levy uses Deleuzian concepts such as re-/de- territorialization.
Deleuze, Incompossibility, individuality, liberty
I'm not going to talk theory here. Rather, I'd like to consider how we might think of Deleuze's essay in terms of information/virtuality/place. If we take all of the information available to us, then the creation of an event, moment, singularity, or reality is actualized through a particular interface that makes the information useful for that particular purpose. The same information can be virtualized in a Levian (Levy-an?) sense, because we can take that information, repackage it, and create something completely different. So, while there exists an infinitely growing amount of information (database), we interface with that information at particular points, or nodes, actualizing for a bit a particular reality out of all possibilities.
Borges, Garden of the forking paths
Reading this makes us question the extent to which hypertext is medium-specific. I'm not sure about the editors' claims, however, that this is the first hypertext work. While I'm unfamiliar with Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake," I've heard that it's written in such a style that you can start it at any point, read it straight through, etc.