moment at which we could no longer believe our eyes and when faith in
perception became slave to faith in the technical sightline, citing the images
that were created and distributed in the First World War as a discernable
turning point (Virilio, 1989: 16-17).
Today, and despite the fact that society is arguably becoming
increasingly media literate, we give credibility to events that are narrated by
mass media, and we ignore, in most cases, who is behind the information that
we are receiving and the political or economical intentions of showing (or not
showing) certain things. In this way, we can build an opinion about certain
facts based on information that is shown partially, that is somehow
transformed or translated, or is simply an invention. The mass media are thus
a fundamental part in today’s socialization process: the symbolic bases of our
lives, they tend to work on our conscience, behaviour, attitudes and opinions
in a similar way that the experience of reality influences dreams. What
currently exists is a feedback system between distorting mirrors, as Manuel
Castells states with particular reference to the medium of cinema:
Mass media are the expression of our culture and our culture
penetrates basically by the materials provided by mass
media. Consequently, when cinema, which is the most
suitable support for the elaboration of dreams, is full of
science fiction, it corroborates that we are living a stage in
which fantasy and reality are confused, mixed in an
indifferent way (Castells, 1999: 369).
Because we are living in a time in which technology is able to simulate what
our imagination creates, it is not necessary simply to rely on our imagination,
or to differentiate for ourselves what is real and what is not, as technology
can do this for us. Specifically, videogames and the development of Virtual
Reality embody this ability with their continuous technological innovations
and their (potential) offer of a total interactive immersion within which we
can live a different or better life. Today we can identify a parallel world of
bits, not necessarily opposed to the world of flesh, but complementary and
sometimes substitutive.
If the term ‘reality’ implies certain difficulties in its application due to
the ambiguity of its definition and the disparity of interpretations that it
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