On 05/31/2012 11:38 AM, Richard Dobson wrote:
On 31/05/2012 10:03, Dave Malham wrote:
..
Here, to any extent, I depart from Gibson. With sufficiently advanced
technology there comes a point at which the effort required to suspend
disbelief is so small as to be negligible. I was reading a report on a
paper a few months ago (I think in New Scientist) where the authors were
suggesting that some on-line gamers have difficult perceiving the "real
world" as actually being real when they come out of the games.
But surely that is more appropriately regarded as a
pathological/delusional mental state (and very possibly a dangerous
one), not a natural one representing some sort of technological nirvana.
There is a world of difference between entertaining and even immersing
in a fantasy as such (as in attending any Shakespeare play), and a
delusion leading to possibly dysfunctional behaviour in "the real
world". Shall we call this the "Matrix Syndrome"?
allow me to suspend the circling of wagons to offer a personal anecdote:
there is a strategy game that involves pushing rows of black and white
marbles around on (and ultimately off of) a hexagonal grid, i guess it's
called "abalone".
when i have played this game (and staring at the round and hexagonal
shapes intensely) for half an hour or so, and i look my opponent in the
face, my perception of that face has changed - it looks chiselled or
square-edged to me. looking at my own hands, their shape is unfamiliar
and slightly unpleasant. looking around the room, i'm acutely aware of
right angles all over the place and perceive them as unnatural.
this effect takes at least a minute to subside.
3D movies have a similar effect on me: unless they are totally
unbelievable, the skewed depth perception is accepted as "normal" over
the course of the movie, and when i leave the cinema, the real depth
perception is suddenly so remarkable that i become consciously aware of
depth cues which would normally be ignored as "nothing out of the ordinary".
despite these pathological mental states, my functioning in the real
world has not been affected (or so i'd like to believe). hence, i'm
confidently resuming the circling of wagons now.
--
Jörn Nettingsmeier
Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487
Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio)
Tonmeister (VDT)
http://stackingdwarves.net
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