I was looking out the window of building in Phoenix a couple months ago. It was rainy, and you could see the mountains in the distance, alternately shaded and “sunned” as wandering clouds passed over them. It was very pretty. We even had goats on the other side of the street, spread quite incongruously in front of a sport stadium.
It got me to thinking: if the windows were actually high definition TV’s, that were so good you couldn’t tell the difference, how would that affect your perception? If you didn’t know it, it wouldn’t matter, would it? If you did know it, though, to what extent would that matter? What if you “knew” (because you were told) that they reflected some reality on the other side of the planet, or some past reality of that spot? Or some projected reality, generated by a computer?
Extending this: what if we created animatronic robots, that responded through virtual reality with someone on the other side of the planet? For example, what if your wife was on the other side of the planet in some sort of virtually reality suit, and you were too, and the two of you made love? How would that effect things?
What if the other person were deleted, and you were ONLY interacting with a robot programmed to act like your lover?
In my viewl, TV as we use it today has an effect of creating a perceptual distance between the viewer and the world. It tends to create a spirit of detachment. It seems to me we are all becoming more mechanical, less engaged in our actual emotions and whatever that gestalt is we call our selves, that can reach out and touch other realities.
At the same time if we accept Hindu ideas of Maya, the “real world” was ALREADY TV, it was already a projection, as Plato argued, on the backs of our minds. TV, then becomes one more delusion in a world of delusions.
When I first saw “The Matrix” I told my friends that maybe it was actually a signal intended to release us; maybe it was a sign. I was being facetious, of course, but they didn’t get it.