The Virtues of Transversal Thinking and Virtual Reality

^horrible puns aside, it was only until recently that I truly grasped the brilliance and sheer potential of virtual realty or augmented reality technology. Embarrassingly I have remained ignorant (but not blissfully) of the advances of these technologies. Funnily enough it was something as simple as this video, found through a link on Chris Greyson’s blog “GigantiCo“, that sparked my realisation:

Reading Greyson’s overview of the capabilities and future potentialities of what he calls augmented reality technology elucidates anticipation but also raises some difficult social and ethical questions; especially following previous consideration of media ecologies.

Already we have seen the emergence of our new networked society, pioneered by the proliferation of social media and convergent media technologies. It seems the inevitable next step is towards an even greater connected society facilitated by continuously advancing virtual reality (VR) technology. One of the (potentially arguable, as we will see) limitations of present social network technologies such as Facebook and Twitter is that it eliminates the face-to-face contact that is vital, I argue, for social development. With VR technology, this could be eliminated as our Facebook friends enter our homes, business associates enter our office with out leaving their building and foreigners enter our nations.

These amazing capabilities are destined to change how we think about privacy, ethics our social interaction and our perception of reality itself. The key to anaylsing and considering all these factors is transversal thinking. Transversality is a concept pioneered by Felix Guattari as an approach to the study of the emerging networked society. It challenges traditional single disciplinary thinking,  for example, considering something only through a political or ethical lens. Transversal thinking asks us to approach our interactions by considering these different critical ideas as a whole. In the process we can draw out new connections and ideas on how media ecologies and the networked society operates. As put by Andrew Murphie in “The World is a Clock: The Network Society and Experimental Ecologies”

“Thinking transversally is a challenge to disciplinarity in favour of a transdisciplinaryapproach to these interactions…think(ing) transversally is a response to political, social, and indeed ecological emergencies, occasioned in part by the network” (2004; 119)

By applying this way of thinking we can truly grasp the nature and machinations of the network society within different media ecologies. This will become even more vital as VR media proliferates. A new element of critical thinking will be added to the transversal approach, that is a consideration of the state of reality.

There is potential that in the future two realities will emerge; the real and the semi-transient virtual world. This new reality will potentially operate under a different system of rights, ethics and social expectations and be impacted by different political and cultural pressures. The separate existence and subsequent interaction of these two realities can only be properly analysed transversally to grasp and understand the connections. It will be a society exposed to an entire different sphere of networked societies and media ecologies, more complex and interwoven than ever before.

Transversality is needed; as Murphie writes:

“A network is never fusion. Yet neither are environment, technology, and life,strictly speaking, separable. In fact, they individuate with each other, at the same time as the tensions between different individuating systems such as “life,” “technology,”and the “environment” give rise to multitudes of new differences—the more so themore networked they are.” (2004; 120)

References

Grayson, C.  ”Augmented Reality Overview”. (2009). GigantiCo. [Online, accessed 26/03/2011] http://gigantico.squarespace.com/336554365346/2009/6/23/augmented-reality-overview.html

Youtube. “Ray Ban Virtual Mirror” (2008) [Online video, accessed 24/03/2011] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E_T7hARgiM&feature=player_embedded

Murphie, A. ‘The World’s Clock: The Network Society and Experimental ecologies” (2004). Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 11.

Guattari, F.  ”l’inconscient machinique: essays de schizo-analyse”. (1979).  Paris: EncresEditions Recherches

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Tags: ARTS3091, Seminar: Thurs 2-4