Granted that virtual worlds are increasingly immersive environments, what happens when we extrapolate backwards? According to ArtMuseum.net (the premier online art exhibitor), we eventually get to Lascaux. Emerging from the caves, Joseph Campbell wrote: "Without exception these magical spots occur far from the natural entrances of the grottos, deep within the dark, wandering chill corridors and vast chambers, so that before reaching them one has to experience the full force of the mystery of the cave itself. Their absolute, cosmic dark, their silence, their unmeasured inner reaches and their timeless remoteness... can be felt even today, when the light of the guide's light goes out."
People ask me whether we can honestly expect large numbers of people to be immersing themselves in virtual worlds 10, 20, or 50 years from now. Consider: if the immersion impulse was truly behind the emergence of visual art itself, some 15,000 years ago, it must lie very, very deep in the mind.
Sorry? I was under the impression that "large numbers of people" were immersing themselves in virtual worlds today. Never mind the future.
Legend of Mir claims 700,000 simultaneous users at peak times--in China....
Sure, this is a "minority taste" at present. But it's not an obscure phenomemon, either.
Posted by: Greg Costikyan | Sep 15, 2003 at 18:32
Ah, VR and caves.
I long took for granted a genealogy of immersive tech similar to ArtMuseum.net's: from Lascaux to Greek theater to magic lanterns to cinema to Smell-o-Vision and so to the visions of Jaron Lanier in a straight line toward the holy grail of perfect immersive fidelity.
The work of media historians like Jonathan Crary has since brought me around to suspecting that the line is not so straight. Different eras and cultures have different ideas of what their spectacles are trying to achieve, and immersion, in the VR sense, hasn't always been the goal.
Nonetheless, there is something deep about the relationship between caves and the virtual worlds we talk about here. Not for nothing did the inventor of the computer game Adventure (wellspring of every MUD and MMOG in existence) base his game maps on his experiences spelunking Kentucky's Mammoth Cave system. Not for nothing did Plato (the original D&D-bashing Concerned Community Leader) choose a darkened cavern as the setting for his famous nightmare of mass-media manipulation, the "Simile of the Cave."
I wrote about these connections at length last year ( http://www.topicmag.com/articles/02/dibbell.html ), but I never did quite figure out any grand unifying theory for the affinity between caves and virtual worlds. I don't think there is one. I think that the meaning of virtual worlds for us now cannot be traced to some single, primordial human urge but is, rather, a maze of twisty little passages, not all of them alike.
Posted by: Julian Dibbell | Sep 17, 2003 at 01:32