ABSTRACT MACHINES AND NEW SOCIAL SPACES

Abstract

This essay elaborates a theoretical framework within which four examples of the virtual reality novel are examined. The framework draws on Pierre Lévy's book, Becoming Virtual (1998), as well as philosophical discussions of the concept of the virtual in writings by Henri Bergson, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. In contrast to the opposition between the possible and the real, the dynamic of the virtual is understood as a potential power or agency actualized in a process that can change the basis of our current notions of reality. More specifically, the essay suggests that the material operations of today's computer technology are the source of this virtual power and that we can see how it is variously represented in the virtual reality novel. While each of the four novels depicts living or acting within virtual reality spaces, they differ markedly in how these experiences are integrated into larger narrative concerns, which include the decoding and recoding of the human body, cultural identity, sexuality and control, and the new apparatuses of surveillance and communication this technology will soon bring about.

Keywords:

• virtual reality novel
• virtual vs. actual
• computer
• abstract machines
• information
• decoding
• recoding

Notes

It should be noted, however, that much of the attention initially given to VR has been more recently displaced and absorbed in digital simulation and especially computer games.

In Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus these processes operate as component aspects of a larger assemblage (agencement). In my book, The Allure of Machinic Life, I show how computers operate within what I call computational assemblages.