PSA has pointed to ideas about human perception, and how we “create” our world as we live it, and how this is often referred to as being self-reflexive. IOW, sort of living in a mirror, and how that quality of understanding perception helps us understand media… because media is a mirror and a place we create, and a place we live in, all at the same time.
While that may be hard to grasp, and hard to explain, nevertheless it’s part of understanding a world where we spend hours and hours watching/ living in “screens” of various sizes. One could view that as being trapped in a sort of “Matrix” artificial reality, or merely having an amazing new set of worlds to explore and learn from and live in, which is, after all, the human condition.
Speaking of amazing new sets of worlds, there’s a new virtual reality game being developed called “No Man’s Sky“, which is “created as we go” by mathematics and algorithms…something called “procedural generation”… which is an idea that has been around for some time…but reaching heretofore unreached heights and “near infinite possibility”. At least that’s what seems promised in this New Yorker article below.
In addition to our “exterior reality” which is being “created” milisecond by millisecond by our “means of perception”….we also have an interior reality also created by ourselves which we use to create worlds to exist in: our imagination.
IOW, before the extensions of man came along, or before we invented them, we were already in a sort of fun house of mirrors when it comes to “what is real?”. Now with the extensions (media) added on to our perceptive reality, our consciousness…it’s even more a mystery to sort out what is real from what isn’t. If that’s even fully possible, because we are always using our perceptive “machinery” to know anything.
Since we aren’t likely to teleport out of our brains/bodies anytime soon (?), it’s best to understand media the best we can, and adjust our actions and learning tools accordingly and appropriately.
It’s not as scary at it might seem, as this is the way it’s been for humans since way back. Earlier cultures seemed to be “embedded in Myth“, a form of self reflexive reality and set of perceptive tools. How much different is it today for us? How can we cope and meet the challenge of understanding media today?
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/The-Galaxy-Sized-Video-Game-The-New-Yorker.pdf”]