Virtual walking??!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHfUpI66tfo&feature=related
i cant quite work out how to get videos from youtube on to here so you will have to click the link, its a little boring but totally illustrates my point.
With new advances in technology, it looks like we might soon be able to take a walk in the park while stood on a piece of carpet embedded in our living room floors using a 'Cyber carpet' and a vr headset. To me, this begs the question ' are we taking this too far?' surely if you want to go for a walk in the park, it would be a much better experience to actually, go to the park and walk there, rather than pretend you are in the park. Don't get me wrong, i love games and i love having a 'second life', i like the wii and id like to try the cyber carpet out. but i have to say that i would choose a day walking in the real hills, with real wind and real floor and real dogs.
I understand that these treadmill like objects would help medically, for physiotherapy for example. but why not just go for a walk round the block??
this notion baffles me, in worried that in the future, people are simply going to live in their houses, but 'visit' their friends and 'visit' the shops and try things on. As amazing as the internet is... people really do need to bear in mind the Amazingness (is this a word?) of the outdoors.
What do you think?
1 comment:
Ahh....Haylee. I can 'better' that walking carpet (if I can only find the YouTube video), :| I'll look later. I essentially totally concur with your sentiments. The synchronous synthesis of sensation of real life is, at this point in our evolution, unbeatable; the whole really IS more than the sum of the parts. Who knows for future generations though...
I suppose to appreciate how technological existence may, at some point, be the 'experience of choice' over and above the truly natural, you have to allow for unfathomablly massive advances in technology, increasingly greater human immersion in cyberspace....and reflect on Plato and the "Allegory of the Cave". There's an entry on this blog ("Down the Rabbit Hole" or something) about just this potential dilemma.
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