To escape reality means to create a separate, different reality to this one, while to expand means that the Internet Utopia becomes a part of this world.
What defines real/ with spiritual overtones.
Ever since 1950, when a company in Massachusetts called Brekely Associates created Simon, the first personal computer, the human race feel in love with the idea of easy, accessible information. (Frauenfelder 2005, p.116). Since that time, the PC has advanced, becoming quicker, cheaper and more powerful and accessible to the common human. And since that time, the computer has come to be it's own medium and soon after, humans realised the potentially that could come from creating virtual worlds, separated from this reality.
John Walker once said, while addressing the issue of virtual reality, in 1992, "When you're interacting with a computer, you are not conversing with another world." (Woolley 1992, p.i) The possibility of 'expanding your horizon' was one that was greatly considered when talking about the early Internet. It meant that humans could learn information that was either impossible to learn in their area or to be exposed to new information that they were not aware of before.
But when the internet allowed humans to create their own horizons, it also created the feel of being a god, a being who could create, destroy and modify their world to their whim.
Given the power of 'god', virtual reality allowed humans to create their own world based upon their own vales. "...virtual reality allows us 'to play god" (eds, 2006 p.77) With games like The Sims and virtual chat rooms such as IMVU, this statement becomes only more true as technology moves closer to virtual reality perfection. Humans are given the ability to create their own world, with a some what god like aspect. But by doing so, there is the ongoing debate on whether humans are creating future goals for society to reach or are benign distracted from a better future possibilities.
How the Utopia distracts from life
Alexander R. Galloway's 'Warcraft and Utopia' talks about how humans act within a society online.
"The freedom to selectively simulate, then, operates in a video game as the most important scaffolding for utopia...the game is a utopia for a world without significance; it is characterized by a minimalist desire" (Galloway 2006). There is a question on the true value of world that cannot effect this reality directly. An example of this would be the case where the parents sued Blizzard after their boy killed himself becuse of World of Warcraft addiction. However, it is not the direct actions, but rather the consequences of those actions, but rather the consequences of those actions that actions that cause such extreme effects on this reality. As the world of technology grows in strength and popularity, individuals are able to spend the majority of their time on virtual utopia's that has little or no consequences or benefits to this world.
Many would claim that the main reason for such online behavior is to distract ones self from actually reality (reality that can't be altered to suit the desires of an individual.) "This is because distraction is a logic of escape and capture. To distract something is to elude its clutches; but also, as a consequence, to now clutch it, secretly and from behind." (Bogard 2000) To offer a consistent escape develops a dependence on that escape, the need for it to be always there. If humans are contently given ways to ignore or escape their problems in reality, they eventually develop a dependence on the escape as an addiction, one that if suddenly withdrawn, will have grave consequences.
Then there is the fear that as humans escape reality, they also server the understanding of the world, and how it actually works, to simple accept second-hand information as true. "...Accept the cope as the original. Increasingly removed from experiences, over dependent on the representation of reality that comes to us through television and the print media, we seem more and more willing to put our trust in intermediaries who 're-present' the world to us" (Slouka 1995, p.1) Humans have, over the years, become quick to accept information from the internet, even though there is no legal obligation to. And even if the sites could be trusted, there will always be a bias viewpoint of the Journalist who wrote the news piece.
How 'unreal' has effected reality
But this does raise the question on whether humanity can learn through a non-existing utopia. How can one gain information from a world that does not exist, nor has any chance of effecting the course of history.
"The effects of learning through virtual reality are felt throughout the education system to the extent that the substance of learning (the curriculum) responds to the forces of virtual reality, and to the unconscious multiplicities that released through the creative action of elan vital" (Cole 2005) To say that to learn anything new or of value needs to come from a definitive place is shallow minded. Utopia has become as much of a reality as this life has, since it effects a very large amount of humans since the Internet was first created. Both realities have a certain conduct, to which many be abided; with Internet utopia having its own definitive language. This language has been learned and applied to throughout today's culture. Some would argue that such knowledge is trivially, and unworthy to learn, and as such, will not be remember in the impact that these so called worlds without significance have had on many human's lives.
Cyberspace has long since been used by humans to escape their reality to create their own. It is in cyberspace that human emotions and ideas have become very real in the 'unreal' utopia.
"Cyberspace is (also) a political and demiurgic project, a projection space of n dimensions, one that comes closer and closer to the ephemeral sphere of infinite range centered on each of its point (Pascal, following Alain de Lille). Here, everyone will project their anuish and dreams, according to their own private ambitions and nightmares." (Bardini 2004) Collectively speaking, cyberspace is able to gather groups of humans, and allow them to converse and indulge in ideas that, given the structure of reality, would fail in life. Like the concept of vampires, which do not exist in reality, has generated websites dedicated to the life and the understanding of vampire lore. Virtual reality allows humans to create scenarios, that can be used and tested, that if successfully, could be applied in real life.
But there is the fear that cyberspace will replace reality, thus effectively destroying that is 'real' and preserving that of which is 'fake'. This fear, however, is irrelevant, due to the naturally way that humans are constructed, that inspiration by reality will always remain alive through cyberspace.
"...in a strange way, cyberspace restores a surrogate nature, reinstating the affective life at a level where the psychic framework of cyberspace absorbs nature not only by transposing space exploration into electronics through telepresence, but by actually reviving certain experiential qualities that the human being once felt in nature and now feels for cyberspace. (Heim 1998, p.152) Humans could not create a cyber-utopia if there was no nature.
Cyberspace does not change by itself, it needs reality influences and ideas to progress. Since humans are part of reality, new ideas will always be based upon reality with minor modifications.
Freedom can become it's own prison. With the need to escape the physical prison, humans can often overlook the prison that they freely choose.
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