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Future Shocks

Virtual Reality as a Catalyst for Thought

Joakim Vindenes says VR could be a useful addition to the philosopher’s toolkit.

Virtual Reality is in some ways a simple concept: it can be reduced to an act of representation, symbolism, or language. Through technological means – be it a pencil or a VR headset – we can represent the past as we remember it and the future as we imagine it. Through language and imagery, we can maintain the human culture of sharing information by exteriorizing what previously was only known to us internally – creating outside of ourselves what was previously only accessible in the language of our minds. So in conceptual terms, even the first cave painting was a kind of Virtual Reality. Through that painting, humans could represent their thoughts and designs as an external, objective reality, chalked to the wall of a cave.

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