aro0823, poster

“The terms ‘virtual reality’ and ‘real time’ attest to the force of the second media age in constituting a simultaneous culture” (538).

Poster, like the majority of our other postmodern philosophers, posits notions about “transforming the identity of originals and referentialities” (538). Simulacra is thus occurring on multiple dimensions. Not only are multiple copies of real world objects are being made, but copies of virtual objects are also. Further, real world things are copied into the virtual world and virtual things are being placed in the real world. The Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon are prime 90s examples of real world things being copied into the virtual world, for the individual has the ability to mimic and control real life by building their own, idealized version on a computer screen. Houses and rollercoasters similar to ones in developments and amusement parks are available to serve as models to help ease the transition into the virtual world.

The converse of this phenomenon exists as well. Scientists and engineers design computer programs to virtually solve problems that exist in the real world. The mechanical solutions to these problems are then taken from cyberspace and applied in a real world setting. In both cases, the “direct tinkering with reality” in a virtual landscape serves to directly modify your real-life surroundings based on what you did in an alternative landscape.

Programs such as the aforementioned represent postmodernity because they allow for emphasis on the individual narrative, or as Lyotard would say, the “little story” (544). Though the individual narratives may or may not have broader societal implications, their mere existence represents an enormous shift from the time of totalized metanarratives to the age where each individual’s actions have repercussions. Though little stories “validate difference,” the highlighting on each one of them encourages the establishment of a global community where each small narrative is revered as a bigger piece of the whole instead of the whole in its entirety the primary focus (545).