The name is absent

alternative/virtual worlds. This is the moment in which this world and this
technology are being formed and created. This is the moment to be conscious
of what technology is:

To be unaware that technology comes equipped with a
program for social change, to maintain that technology is
neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a
friend of culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and
simple (Postman, 1985: 157).

Since the beginning of modernity, and very much associated with the
development of technology, western civilization has shown an increasing
inability to come to terms with, and understand, the reality of the world.
Warren Bennis and Ian Mitroff describe this situation in these terms: ‘we do
not only lose interest in dealing with reality per se but we invented substitute
realities. Somehow, we became more adept at dealing with these substitute
realities, or unrealities as we call them’ (Bennis and Mitroff, 1989: 6). These
technological unrealities to which the authors refer are sometimes easier to
control and deal with than the reality in which we live. According to these
authors, the human mind is not only prepared to perceive reality, but also to
recreate simulated realities in the form we want them to be.

Consequently, a combination of modern works such as Einstein’s
Theory of Relativity, the influence of Baudrillard’s ideas about simulation,
the questioning that we can find in the skeptical novels of Philip K. Dick and
the power of the images in contemporary films such as The Matrix, with its
visions of futuristic virtual societies, has positioned the examination of
(un)reality as a cultural and social phenomenon. In this sense, the inability to
control our creations produces doubt about everything that surrounds us, and
the search for conspiracy has become symptomatic of contemporary
societies. Our time is characterized by bringing together contrary poles, a
time of reality and unreality, the fragment and the global; a time where we
believe and disbelieve in absolutely everything. We even have doubts about
our doubts and skepticism becomes an ideology in itself.

The ideas about the confusion of the nature of reality together with a
fear of the arrival of new technologies were anticipated by authors such as

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