Lecture for Day 4 - Virtual Worlds

What a great topic, so controversial. The Matrix opened up many different lines of conversation. Not sure that this is what Adam had in mind for us today, but.......

So much of today's conversational content was reminiscent of my earlier Psych lectures. What we see is not necessarily what is in front of us or what the person beside us is seeing. Our perception is a combination of the actual/physical item and our experiences of the past, or how we interpret the item.

But onto another issue raised in the youtube clip was our rights to privacy or invasion of liberties. We developed motor vehicles and then had to draw up rules and laws to modulate the use of them. So now we have developed the internet and now we need to draw up rules and laws to regulate the use of it. I don't have a problem with this at all. What I do object to is governments enforcing their laws or rules without first advising the populace. A sad reality is that our 'REAL' world is inhabited by bad people and as a society we need to maybe give up some of our 'GOD GIVEN RIGHTS' in order for us to deal with these bad people. These are my own thoughts and opinions and I certainly don't expect everyone to conform to my ways of thinking, but I do sometimes feel that we take the issue of rights much too far. So I think I had better stop now before I get on my soap box!

Now a comment made by our esteemed Adam really resonated with me. To quote "is there a universal truth? Do we all see the same world?" This is great food for thought and I don't think we as humans can ever answer this. But Deleuze's explanation was fascinating. to give a brief run down on my understand:

There exists a real world. Then there is potential, or what may happen. But we are in the actual world at this precise moment, oops now that moment is now a past memory. Now the virtual world is what has happened in the past (memories) plus what can happen in the future (potential) and the way in which we think about this. so virtual as opposed to actual. Get it? Hmmmmm......

I love this stuff. It keeps me thinking and makes the actual (here and now) much more interesting because is it really this or could it be that?

Yours in past, present, virtual, actual and potential - Lee

Oh me again, minus soap box. I just remembered something from the lecture that I wanted to comment on. The film clip introduced one use that I can see real value in. I didn't get the doctors name, but to use this technology to show students a day in the life of a patient with a psychological disorder, has merit. Schizophrenia is a serious condition, but one that is difficult to understand from a layman's point of view. So to be able to walk in the shoes of a patient and experience what they have to deal with could be a wonderful tool in teaching doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists and giving them much greater understanding and insight.

Well bye again.

Lee