The Great Fake | City Journal
What, exactly, can modern imitative technology do for us that a Caravaggio painting or a Fritz Lang silent movie does not? Thirty years ago, MIT mechanical engineer Thomas Sheridan wrote presciently about the potential of virtual reality. What do the new technological interfaces add, and how do they affect this sense, beyond the ways in which our imaginations (mental models) have been stimulated by authors and artists for centuries? He gave three answers that nicely capture the new technology s capabilities. First is the degree of sensory information: the resolution, the colors, the sound quality, the naturalness of movement, and so on, reach new levels. Second is participation: Can the player actually control his actions in the game and react to given changes in the environment and respond to the stimuli that the environment poses or the statements that simulated figures make? Third, can the agent control not just his own movements but also the fake environment itself, so that the player is in total control of all the parameters and, in principle, can even play against himself?
This is going to be one of the great moral issues of our children’s time.