Due Monday October 3rd
Read these two texts and post a response below:
Colonizing Virtual Reality: Construction of the Discourse of Virtual Reality, 1984-1992 by Chris Chesher (1994)
What Is Virtual Reality? by Brenda Laurel (2016)
Some starting points:
Are some of the narratives around the first wave of Virtual Reality persisting today? Are there new narratives and tropes surrounding contemporary VR?
Can you think of other technologies that embraced the same tropes since the early ’90s (frontier myth, making history, inevitability, coming from the margins…)?
What kind of metaphors and analogies could/should be used to talk about VR today (if any)?
Respond to any of the quotes that are not extensively unpacked in the paper. E.g.:
“My idea of virtual reality is that, in the long run, it’s going to shut down television.” -Jaron Lanier
“Virtual reality can be an extension of a tendency in western capitalist societies to commodify human experience”