Cyberspace

is here and now

April 11, 2011, 4:47 PM

The frontier between what is virtual and real is no more

By Ricardo Murer B.S. in Computer Science (USP) and Master's Degree in Communications (USP). Specialist in digital strategy and new technologies. Follow@rdmurer "The virtual universe is more real that it is imagined. It exists around us like a beast or an angel, depending on the side we approach it" Carlos Heitor Cony, Folha de So Paulo, APR/10/2011 What is the threshold, the boundary between what is real and what is virtual? Where does reality start, and cyberspace end? Computerized and connected microprocessed machines exchange information with each other everywhere. Pervasive, invasive or consented computing. Infoways with billions of bits circulate through the same room you are in right now while you read this article, which is but a matrix of organized pixels on a digital screen whose origin is hundreds, perhaps thousands of kilometers away from you. A hypertext not kept in the files of a library but in data servers distributed in network. The network today known as Cloud. Nothing more suiting than to imagine a cloud with all shapes and yet not shape, something transitory, with the power of a storm and the gentleness of a fine mild summer rain. Bits are like raindrops, moving in all directions, essentially non-linear. It is not possible to distinguish what is virtual and what is not from where you are. The other side of the mirror, Alice's world is now part of reality. Note, analyze your day and you will see that cyberspace fills the space of what is real in a single architecture of texts, images, music and sensations. It is enhanced reality, Kinect hacks, biochips, 3G, Emotiv's neuro-headset, and millions of touch screens. This new state of things inaugurates the end of interfaces, and of human-machine intermediation. In this new territory, atoms and bits coexist. We no longer dwell in an information society, as we have become the information ourselves. I have no doubt as to this being the moment to stop and think about it. By going to books outside of libraries, lessons without masters, love-virtual sex, and the religions without the light of reflection, we cannot do it without discernment, without the proper experience, and without a mentor. In the ocean of digital information one must know how to browse, and work with a clear and open mind in order to resist the mermaid's enchanting song. If the real world is filled with hostility, violence and deception, the virtual sands and beaches

represent an even greater danger because the traps are hidden, everything is in motion, everything is appearance, binary architecture, always distant and intangible. As Cony so perfectly wrote "The virtual universe is more real that it is imagined. Cyberspace is here, now, where you are. What we do with the neutral universe of digital information depends eventually on a layer above, referred to as wisdom.