Прогрессивный журнал Генезис

8 Virtuality The paradox of virtuality runs through twists and turns in the history of language. The “vir- tual” for first-century Romans indicated manly strength and straightforward power (Latin vir ), what Italian courtiers would in the Renaissance dub virtu . Medieval thinkers downshifted the meaning of the Roman word as scholastics like Thomas Aquinas (circa 1250) distinguished a power existing in something “inherently” or vir- tualiter as opposed to essentially ( essentialiter ) or actually ( actualiter ). Here the virtuality of a thing is no longer its power to be present straightforwardly with strength. The strong but now less visibly intrinsic power fades even more in the fourteenth century English term which was borrowed from the French virtuel by which “virtual” came to mean something that is im- plicit but not formally recognized, something that is indeed present but not openly admitted - - something there virtually but not really or ac- tually there. This weaker, nearly invisible virtu- ality would blossom into a new semantic flower as the need for a computer-based aesthetics arose in the 1980s. Computers began to simu- late digitized objects as recognizably vivid phe- nomena. The newly digitized phenomena were visible with many of the characteristics of pri- mary realities and needed a new descriptive term. The virtual object was now a functional object – even reproduced as a three- dimensional object - but now generated in a digital environment. The historical linguistic paradox – strong presence dimmed to near in- visibility followed by subtle presence – parallels the broader general paradox of contemporary virtuality. The paradox: Virtuality succeeds by disap- pearing. At its diaphanous best, virtuality van- ishes into sheer transparency. Once software flows smoothly throughout the contours of human gestures, needs, and desires, there is a feeling of unmediated activity. One deals with the things themselves, not with software or virtuality as such. As VR advocates claimed in the 1980s and 90s, the computer will eventual- ly disappear, and so will virtuality itself. With cultural adaptation, the realities themselves exist in the virtual, and as wrinkles smooth out, old habits and entire economies assume new a configuration. The high profile of standalone virtuality fades into an early stage of epochal re-alignment. Virtuality is at first highly visible. Prior to routine digitization, a Platonic yearning wants to carve out a separate uncontaminated space, an independent realm of pure computer con- trol. Thus idealized, *Virtual Reality enjoys hermetic properties and stimulates speculative imagination. For Ivan Sutherland (1968) virtu- ality was a set of floating light cubes perceived through boom-style monitors. For Myron Krueger (1975) virtuality was a "smart envi- ronment" where bodily movements evoke real- time computer responses perceived by simul- taneous users who physically share the same artificial setting. For Jaron Lanier (1989) VR was a data glove and goggles that manipulate a cornucopia of three-dimensional objects which can outrun the symbols of spoken lan- guage.