Jacking In
When we go to the movies, many of us live a vicarious life for about two hours. Our attention can sometimes be so riveted on the screen that we neglect to attend to our own direct experience. We may forget the chair we're sitting in and the people who surround us. We become immersed.That feeling of immersion can happen with a good book, or even with a good television show, but it becomes even stronger at the movies because then we're in a darkened, unremarkable room facing a large, bright screen that demands our sole attention. Immersion becomes easier still if the action wraps around our eyes, as it does at some theme parks. The action then covers our peripheral vision. When that happens, we often forget where we are and start thinking we're somewhere else.
We can further heighten the visual illusion by using a visor with two separate tiny screens that give each eye a slightly different view of the scene. Our brain seamlessly blends the two views and gives us depth perception, so that we feel as if we're seeing a real, three-dimensional scene. The same illusion works when sounds seem to surround us; listening to a good stereo system can do it. Evolved to interpret only one reality at a time, our brain often starts thinking it's in the environment producing the sounds.
Yet another way to induce the illusion of being elsewhere is to sit in a reactive chair that moves and shakes as it would if we were in another environment---say, a helicopter flight high over the Andes, an earthquake in Los Angeles, or a rock concert at Wembley Stadium.
The whole point is to enter an immersive world. If a simulation is sophisticated enough in sight, sound, and sensation, our brain suspends disbelief in the artificiality of the experience. When that happens, we enter a new world.
Then, to complete the illusion and to move beyond simple entertainment, the immersive world could become reactive---that is, it could respond to our wishes. If a computer could notice a turn of our head, a flick of our wrist, or a blink of our eye, it could change what we sense. If that happened then what we do would affect the world. We would enter a virtual reality.
Reactivity alone is so powerful a seducer that video game aficionados often fall into a video game world, even if the game's designers have made little attempt to make it realistic. It is significant that video games are probably the single most popular use for computers today. Once our actions have direct effects on our environment, its sight, sound, and sensation qualities almost don't matter. When what we do makes a difference in the world, then the world, no matter how unrealistic or unrealizable, is enterable through the door of our imagination.
When this happens, we can do and be anything the computer will let us do or be. If the system were good enough, we could enter a new universe with its own laws. There would also be no reason why we couldn't link up with many others scattered around the globe, each immersed in the same artificial experience. We would then be jacked into an artificial world---a virtual world---cyberspace.
Video Games with Real Blood