|
|
Article: Screenworld
- Article from:
- Psychotherapy Networker
- Article date:
- January 1, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright Psychotherapy Networker, Inc. Jan/Feb 2009. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
|
Screenworld Reality isn't what it used to be
 by Michael Ventura
Not so long ago, I taught a graduate writing seminar in which I got caught in an argument about virtual vs. "real" experience. Two students--among the brightest in the class--insisted that they could go to Rome via a computer program through which they could view every street, turn this corner and that as they pleased, look at every ruin and work of art, and their experience would be as real, as engaged, as if they'd actually been there. "But," said I, "a pigeon couldn't shit on your head."
Granting that any experience can be called "real," in that it is an experience, I argued that there are differences in the nature of ...