From: eliot@phoenix.princeton.edu (Eliot Handelman)
Subject: Re: Imagination vs. VR (was Re: More on MUDs etc.)
Date: 15 Aug 91 06:47:25 GMT
Organization: Cognitive Science Lab, Princeton U.



In article <1991Aug14.200949.6637@milton.u.washington.edu> craig@utcs.utoronto.ca (Craig Hubley) writes:
;
;Some useful terminology, from McLuhan: a "hot" medium causes increased mental
;activity in the viewer/participant, while a "cool" medium does the opposite.

A nit pick: "understanding" is hot, but perception is "cool," the former
is a sort of social schism as McCluhan saw it because of the privacy
of consciousness (schizophrenia, he said, was a necessary by-product
of print) whereas the latter demands "involvement," "participation."
However visual perception is "hot" in that it enforces distance and
ensures subject-object distinctions: whereas the auditory and tactile
is "cool" in that these distinction are allayed. This led McCluhan to the
paradoxical observation that TV, which he designated a cool medium,
was intrinsically auditory and tactile. His argument had mainly to
do with the low resolution of TV in the late 50's/early 60's: the
completion of the televised image demands perceptual involvement. At
the outer limits of media, when perceptual particpation becomes totalized,
no medium will be able to distinguish itself from its content (hence
his famous aphorism). However McCluhan wanted to engage that assumption
retrospectively, and asserted that the EFFECTS of print on the mind
of man were their essential content, rather than any message that could
be conveyed BY print. The medium becoming the message means  retrieving
the "ear which had been traded for an eye," or to put it terms 
expressed by one of McCluhan's defenders, John Cage, "letting things
be themselves." This means being able to hear and see things as they
are, prior to "hot" category constructions. 

To the topic at hand, whether VR can supplant language, via McCluhan.
M. saw everything as media, including light bulbs: he certainly saw
the computer as a medium. Through it, he said, man has, for the first
time ever, been able to reproduce his own thought processes -- of course
that's a long shot given the status of the AI program, but let's
assume that it will eventually succeed -- and therefore man would soon
be in a position to simulate his own consciousness, which has been
private up to now. The ultimate medium, therefore, is that which 
succeeds at TRANSMITTING consciousness -- roughly, "making consciousness
corporately accessible" he says at the beginning of "Understanding 
Media." This will involve a reversal of intellectual evolution through
print and handwriting to language until a condition of tribalism --
a collectively accessible "spirit," via technological simulation,
obtains. So yes, the point of VR is to supplant language.

It first becomes necessary to identify the medium itself as its
content in order to take this step: that's why some people already
have begun to question the idea of the "interface." Interface
to what? The icon will disappear. Representations will disappear.
There will be no symbols.  "Information" will be directly encoded 
as perceptual structure. That's what it is to be auditory and
tactile. A loud sound won't STAND for "a loud sound" -- it will 
BE a loud sound because experienced in that way. Ditto other 
constructions of perceptual function.