Carr's thoughts on what 'virtual reality' is, is encompassed within the much larger idea of Internet and computational capacity being treated as a utility, much like electricity. Carr refers to Google and Amazon as examples of companies who are at the leading edge of supplying services such as software or processing power via a "socket in the wall" (Pg 5, N Carr, 2008). Much as individual residences do not generate their own electricity (for the most part for better or worse), rather then own processing power or software in your own computer these resources are also supplied and consumed as needed.
The paradigm shift here is the way we recognize the technology of computing as a utility, a "cheap universal commodity," (pg 5, N Carr, 2008) that is among other things a cost of doing business or a domestic resource. The paradigm shift occurs when we start to arrange our lives around this utility, much as we have around electricity or around electric light. But what I have talked about so far is a profound change to our own reality rather then expanding on virtual reality in reference to Carr's writing.
Carr elegantly explains the technical concept of 'virtualization' using the example of a telephone answering machine. The first iteration of the answering machine was a stand alone, analogue, tape-machine. The second iteration was a model with a computer chip, digital, smaller and part of the telephone's form. However now the answering machine is completely digitized, instead of having a form of any kind all it's functions are "replicated though software code". (pg 75, N Carr, 2008).
The telephone answering machine has become a "virtual machine," (pg 75, N Carr, 2008) that exists as part (or many networked parts) of various machines belonging to a telephone company and supplied as a service. Virtualization is the construction of a virtual machine out of pure software that exists on other networked machines.
Pure software is one thing, but since the first steps of the networked computer system it has been plagued with Utopian dogma. From the late 1960s "as computers came to be connected into a single system, many writers and thinkers embraced the view that a more perfect world was coming... They saw the virtual reality of networked computers a setting for social and personal transcendence." (pg 108, N Carr, 2008). Networked computing power is a vehicle for transcendence and equality as much as electricity is. If we view them as a utility then yes it has the power to shift our way of thinking, and living, but it is the human expression in the machine that is changing us, not the machine itself.
There is a "failure to reckon adequately with the computer as a human expression" (pg 194, S Talbott, 2007). In 'Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in the Age of Machines' (2007) Steve Talbott identifies the computer is currently still an artifact of a human expression. A "manifestation of intelligence,"(pg 194, S Talbott, 2007) but of our intelligence as with all other human made artifacts.
By keeping the computer within the context of "an expression of living beings" (pg 195, S Talbott, 2007) we can understand it as a now integral and vibrant part of human activity. Rather then trying to coax intelligence from the computer we can instead recognize that "the intelligence is really there, objectively,"(pg 194, S Talbott, 2007), in the artifact of the computer as much as "in the sound waves uttered from our larynxes, in the pages of the texts we write, in the structure and operation of a loom, automobile or computer." (pg 194, S Talbott, 2007)
The technology of networked computational power, of virtualized machines, of software, is a utility that has the potential to change our lives. It has appended our day to day with constant connectivity, information, a new paradigm for thinking, making and doing.
If we want to see an example of this utility being applied in a way that shifts our way of thinking about the materiality of identity in this appended virtual reality we can look at an example that Carr discusses in 'The big Switch,' that of the online game 'Second Life'.
"Second life is an example of utility service supplied over the internet and shared simultaneously by many people." (pg 114, N Carr, 2008) It is built 'on the fly' (or as required) by many networked machines rather then installed on players individual computers. An example of cloud computing all you need is an internet connection and Web browser to access the virtual environment.
The players inhabit and interact with others players in real time via Avatars that constitute their form in the space, much like in other massively multiplayer online games, such as World of Warcraft. However unlike World of Warcraft there are no rules and no winners or losers, it is simply a space that the players can do what they like via their avatars including write software programs that create new parts of the game. Second life is simply a service that is provided and consumed over the utility of the Internet, like an answer phone.
It therefore stands that virtual reality is, in part, the network. The network is the utility. So virtual reality is a utility? Or is it the creative artifact of a combined human expression?
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