Two interesting articles I read last week reshaped my thinking of the virtual and the real. Eco in his genius “Travels in Hyperreality” uses photographs, museums, and design of the cities as examples to reveal American culture of “hyperreality” and realism and psychology behind them. Eco starts from the phenomenon of Holography and its application in NASA and Museums to open his argument that American is over-obsessed with realism. Superman, in Eco’s opinion is a perfect example that “the completely real becomes identified with the “completed fake” and “absolute unreality is offered as real presence.” I like this quote in his article: “American imagination demands real thing and to attain it, must fabricate”. Sane in his “Then and Now” describes the primitive culture we human beings had made great effort to create images, costumes, and paintings so as to represent the reality and to express the common fascination with fertility and the life cycle. The written symbol (word) was recreated to represent our surroundings. Although now, modern technologies empowered us to build theaters, games, and cartoons, there are out of the common psychological motives that we as human race strive to create imitations of reality. In Sane’s view, our craziness of creating world replicas is driven by a sense of power to be able to reconstruct the world as we imagined.Being able to reconstruct the reality is the unique ability of human beings. As the fantasy of redesigning the world exists in human nature, we would never stop immersing ourselves in virtual worlds.
Reading Eco’s and Sane’s articles, I realize that the line between the real world and virtual world is so blurry, not only in computer-based environment, but also in everyday life. I looked at my daughter’s mini Barbie kitchen set, does that call a virtual experience for her? Her stuffed bears, donkeys, and dogs seem also like a virtual experience to her. They are replicas of real life animals, but are designed and fabricated in a way that is more intimate to kids. The stuffed puppy she has certainly conveys more cultural notions than a real world puppy. I also look at her Elmo, Barney, Mick Mouse, Donald Duck. They seem like coming from the other side of the world. They are all out of imagination and originally have no real-world reference, but now we produce the real-world, touchable replica of the imagined ones. The logic behind this, as I understand, is: it really doesn’t matter whether it is called real or virtual, as long as it brings you happiness, entertainment, a sense of power, and good education, let’s have it. Santa Clause maybe another example of virtual experience of the type.
Back in the world of education, I participated in research study called “Math girl: pedagogical agent as learning companion”. The same ideas apply. The study was proposed to have girls to learn math with on-screen agents who were keep offering encouraging words such as “yes, you can do it” “you are such a smart girl and don’t give up” to middle school girls in hope to change their proposition to learning STEM. It is an interesting study and I can see how researchers are also fascinated by the possibility of infusing the virtual to the real.