However, what we perceive as real is not necessarily what is ‘there’; it is just
an approximate interpretation by our brain of the information available.1 Our
senses are too coarse to be able to capture all the manifestations of reality;
rather they filter reality. As Christian Doelker writes, our ‘perception is
necessarily selective, limits reality and selects what is significant for us’
(Doelker, 1982: 27).
The selection of reality becomes doubly complex when we perceive
reality through the images and information provided by the media. Indeed, it
is through the media that reality becomes more diffused and the concept of
what is real varies inexorably: the reality we perceive will not only be
exogenously configured by the media we are observing, but it will also be
consciously selected by that company or institution. Thus, media becomes the
central antagonist of a technologically mediated reality. As Neil Postman
observes:
We do not see nature or intelligence or human motivation or
ideology as ‘it’ is, but as our languages are. And our
languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our
metaphors create the content of our culture (Postman, 1985:
15).
It is clear that the influence of technology is such that the reality in
which we are living today, ‘our reality’, is no longer the same reality that was
experienced by our ancestors. Centuries ago reality was based on everything
that was experienced through our senses and transmitted by those who
surrounded us. Nowadays, however, the circumstances of mass media and
technological communication mean that something that is happening in
another part of the world seems as close as if it is happening in our own
town. Everything can be reduced to a question of trust, as has been indicated
by Antony Giddens (1990: 29-36); and it is crucial that this trust has varied
substantially in recent decades. In this respect, Paul Virilio dates the critical
1 In this sense, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) defines reality in The Matrix saying: ‘what is real? how
do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and
see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain’. This definition has a strong
connection with the theory of ‘Brain in a Vat’, according to which if the brain is suspended in a vat only
receiving electronic impulses from a computer, there will be no possibility of differentiating the virtual
experiences from real events (Putnam, 1982: 1-21).
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