
Werner Herzog Talks Virtual Reality - rileyjshaw
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/werner-herzog-talks-virtual-realityhttp://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/werner-herzog-talks-virtual-reality
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nefitty
He seems to be as completely baffled by the possibilities of virtual reality
as the rest of us are. The most interesting thing I mined out of this
conversation is Herzog's feeling that life already is a virtual reality. As I
now turn my head from left to right and see the tables and objects around this
room I suddenly feel the unreality of lived existence. Now I imagine wearing a
virtual reality helmet, playing a simulation of a person, who then puts on a
virtual reality helmet and proceeds to load up a similar game himself, and so
on, ad infinitum, as I fall into a fractal abyss of
perception/experience/unreality. I pop the helmet off in a panic and suddenly
realize that I'm back in the game, but this time the game's main hardware is
my head itself. I'm anxious but excited for what will emerge from the VR and
AR revolution.

~~~
KannO
The reason you and others feel the unreality of reality is likely the
excessive exposure to media and the facade of unrealities presented to us as
"reality"

News is crafted more like entertainment rather than investigating facts. The
trend with cinema seems to be realism of fantasy and fiction. Reality TV is
presented to us as if it were documenting "Reality" when it's actually a team
of writers and producers carefully designing a planned narrative.

We sit at computers reading social media posts of friends and strangers
presenting their own selective narratives to their "life" which is more or
less a facade that omits the mundane or "real" aspects that we would encounter
and be aware of were we not all so far removed and isolated by otherwise
anonymous apartment complexes, neighborhoods, and (sub)urban typologies.

Personally, I would not desire any sort of luddite reversion of technology and
entertainment. I do believe there is a concerning trend of detachment from
reality born out of cultural habits, that is largely derived from mass media.

