It has often been said, in regards to any new technology or medium, that our world has been "altered," or "revolutionized." While this is undoubtedly true in the majority of cases it seems to me that the phrase and the social constraints behind it have been lost to poetry and aestheticism. The meaning behind the phrase "our world has changed" carries far more psychological and spiritual weight than even I have previously imagined.
From a purely technical (and semantics) standpoint, to say that our world has been altered is to simultaneously say that our reality has changed. When our ideals values and expectations of the space around us change to allow entrance of new technology, our ideologies that drive our hegemonic structure are likewise altered.
Take for instance, the telegraph, radio and television. All of these new technologies were at first regarded with vernacular usually reserved for the supernatural or occult. These new devices allowed from the proliferation of incredibly new ideologies. These ideas rendered all of geography short of physical experience insignificant. The telegraph revolutionized information services not only changing the informational lexicon and setting the president for today's news, but also literally created time in its own right.
I am not one to subscribe to the belief that our information technologies are merely extensions of a human mind. I believe they are perhaps something more. But I ask everyone to ask themselves some very simple questions.
What is reality?
Did we create these devices within a certain reality or did the devices create us within their own?
If devices have ideologically shifted boundaries, literally created time, and control our daily living, are we not participants in simulated reality?
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