Digital Immersion

Digital Immersion

Reality; this is perhaps the vaguest of human abstractions. In truth, none of us truly know that the other exists, or that an objective “reality” exists. Indeed, we cannot prove the existence of anyone but ourselves, and must be content in believing that reality is more than just our imagination. And yet, humanity continually attempts to thwart the thin strands that tie us to our reality through media. As media grows more powerful, the unreal becomes more real, simultaneously causing the real to become unreal as we become disillusioned with boring “reality.”

If we subscribe to Munovich’s thesis, then media is definitively becoming more variable and liquid, able to adapt to both the user and expand to fill whatever medium we wish it to encompass. Of course, the ultimate conclusion of such change is a media juggernaut, able to vary infinitely based on any user stimuli, fully immersing us into a reality that we can create and modify to any degree. Perhaps such a reality would even be more preferable, to some, than the objective reality which we perceive. This reality is woefully difficult for one person to modify to any significant degree.

Since life as we know it is based entirely upon perception, it is not entirely unreasonably to say that media immersion, which already takes up significant amounts of our time, will soon become the dominant aspect of our existence. That is, people will spend more time submerged in artificial realms than the objective reality. This situation could become so extreme that reality is replaced altogether, and people spend their lives in capsules reminiscent of a Matrix-esque imprisonment. Though such an analogy seems horrific, the possible benefits of such an existence are many.

Life in the objective reality follows no true rationale or purpose. The game is unfair: some people start out with more advantages than others, some people die earlier than others solely based on chance, and some people gain much more than others for far less effort. In a created media universe, none of these inequalities would exist unless somebody wanted them to exist. The game world would provide a clear objective, stemming the disillusionment that one feels with objective reality, as well as the removal of all dissatisfactory aspects of the normal world. The game world would provide each individual with what they believe to be the perfect life, which may be the entire purpose of life itself.

And yet, despite the obvious advantages of an artificially created reality, it seems that something fundamental about human nature will cause us to reject such a lifestyle. We may not even know that this reality is truly real, and yet we cling to it, not because it is perfect, but because it is infinitely variable. Though media may one day approach near-infinite levels of versatility, the limit can always be reached, reminding us that we do not have an entire freedom of choice. Thus, media may never become fully immersive, simply because human nature will not allow it. We prefer to live in an imperfect world, one of war, famine, and illness, over a perfect one, simply because imperfection belies free choice, which we must retain in order to remain happy.