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Are We Already Living in Virtual Reality?

Thomas Metzinger had his first out-of-body experience when he was nineteen. He was on a ten-week meditation retreat in the Westerwald, a mountainous area near his home, in Frankfurt. After a long day of yoga and meditation, he had a slice of cake and fell asleep. Then he awoke, feeling an itch on his back. He tried to scratch it, but couldn’t—his arm seemed paralyzed. He tried to force the arm to move, and, somehow, this shifted him up and out of his body, so that he seemed to be floating above himself. Gazing out into the room, he was both amazed and afraid. He heard someone else breathing and, in a panic, looked around for an intruder. Only much later did he realize that the breathing had been his.

At the time, in the early nineteen-eighties, Metzinger was a philosophy student researching the mind-body problem at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität. During the postwar years, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer had made the university’s Institute for Social Research—the Frankfurt School—a center of neo-Marxist thought, and the campus remained a politically radical place. In Britain and America, philosophers, computer scientists, psychologists, and neuroscientists were working together to reconceive the mind as a purely physical system created by the brain. In Metzinger’s department, such theories were denounced as anti-human and “proto-fascist.” Metzinger considered himself a radical—he had waist-length hair, and was proud to have been teargassed while protesting the U.S. military—but also a rationalist. Immersing himself in the work of the Anglophone philosophers, he’d eventually become convinced that his soul was made by his brain. He was, therefore, doubly shocked by his out-of-body experience, which had seemed irrevocably real. Could materialism be wrong? Could consciousness exist immaterially, outside of the body? He admonished himself: “How arrogant I have been!”

Metzinger began reading about out-of-body experiences. He learned that between eight and fifteen per cent of the population reports having had an “O.B.E.”—perhaps during the night, or after surgery—and that, for millennia, people have seen in such experiences evidence for various mystical theories of the soul. (Many religious traditions hold that there is a “subtle body,” or immaterial version of the self, capable of travelling through space.) Meanwhile, on occasional evenings, he floated around his room. One night, he tried to use the light switch (it didn’t work); he decided to fly through the window and visit his girlfriend, but woke up instead. Metzinger began experimenting on himself. Following the advice of New Age “astral travellers,” he stopped drinking liquids at noon, stared at a glass of water in his kitchen, and then slept with salt in his cheek, hoping to travel back to the glass at night. Before a minor surgery, he persuaded his anesthesiologist to alter his medication so that he could wake up early enough to experience the effects of the drug ketamine, which is famous for inducing out-of-body experiences. The salt had no effect, and the ketamine resulted in hours of unpleasant phantasmagoric hallucinations. Metzinger could find no way to produce O.B.E.s on demand, or to study them systematically.

In 1983, the psychologist Philip Johnson-Laird had published a book called “ Mental Models ,” in which he argued that people often think not by applying logical rules but by manipulating models of the world in their minds. If you want to know whether a rug will go with your sofa, you don’t deduce the answer—you imagine it, by moving furniture around on a mental stage set. During a heated dinner conversation in Tübingen, the psychologist Susan Blackmore, who had studied O.B.E.s, suggested to Metzinger that he hadn’t actually floated around his room: “You were probably moving around your mental map, in your world model,” she said. “No fucking way!” Metzinger remembers thinking. “These experiences are too realistic!” Later, he decided that Blackmore was right. Having read Johnson-Laird, he’d begun to wonder whether reality, as we experience it, might be a mental stage set—a representation of the world, rather than the world itself. Having an O.B.E. could be like visiting the set at night, when it wasn’t being used. Metzinger started to think about how such a model might be constructed. Some internal mental system must function as an invisible, unconscious set dresser, making an itch feel like an itch, coloring the sky blue and the grass green.

As Metzinger developed these ideas, he also had fewer out-of-body experiences. Eventually, they ceased altogether; he set the subject aside and became an eminent philosopher of mind. Then, in 2003, he heard from a Swiss neuroscientist named Olaf Blanke, who had learned how to give people out-of-body experiences when they were fully awake. While treating a forty-three-year-old woman with epilepsy, Blanke had applied electrical current to a particular area of her brain, and she had the experience of floating upward and looking down at her own body. Blanke had found many related illusions. Stimulating another location in the brain created the impression of a doppelgänger standing across the room; stimulating a third created the “sense of a presence”—the feeling that someone was hovering nearby, just out of sight. Unsure how to interpret these results, Blanke had searched the literature and come across some papers by Metzinger. They took the idea of mental models to its logical conclusion. It isn’t just that we live inside a model of the external world, Metzinger wrote. We also live inside models of our own bodies, minds, and selves. These “self-models” don’t always reflect reality, and they can be adjusted in illogical ways. They can, for example, portray a self that exists outside of the body—an O.B.E.

Metzinger and Blanke set about hacking the self-model. Along with the cognitive scientists Bigna Lenggenhager and Tej Tadi, they created a virtual-reality system designed to induce O.B.E.-like episodes. In 2005, Metzinger put on a virtual-reality head-mounted display—a headset containing a pair of screens, one for each eye, which together produce the illusion of a 3-D world. Inside, he saw his own body, facing away from him, standing in a room. (It was being filmed by a camera placed six feet behind him.) He watched as Lenggenhager stroked its back. Metzinger could feel the stroking, but the body to which it was happening seemed to be situated in front of him. He felt a strange sensation, as though he were drifting in space, or being stretched between the two bodies. He wanted to jump entirely into the body before him, but couldn’t. He seemed marooned outside of himself. It wasn’t quite an out-of-body experience, but it was proof that, using computer technology, the self-model could easily be manipulated. A new area of research had been created: virtual embodiment.

From 2010 through 2015, the virtual-reality researchers Mel Slater and Mavi Sanchez-Vives worked with Metzinger and Blanke, in a fourteen-partner E.U.-funded project called Virtual Embodiment and Robotic Re-Embodiment. Their labs, in Barcelona, used immersive virtual reality to manipulate the body models of research subjects, convincing them that the bodies they possessed in V.R. were their own. (Slater and Sanchez-Vives are married; they met at a V.R. workshop, in 2001.) “We have the illusion that our body model is very stable, but that’s only because we’ve never encountered anything else,” Sanchez-Vives said. People who are extremely aware of their bodies—dancers, athletes, yogis—can find the adoption of a virtual body difficult, because they have trouble “letting go.” “But the more you do it the easier it becomes. After you’ve experienced it once, twice, you click into it.” In the past few years, Slater, Sanchez-Vives, and other virtual-embodiment researchers have discovered therapeutic and educational uses for the technology. Meanwhile, Metzinger, along with the philosopher Michael Madary, has drafted a virtual-reality “code of ethics” focussed on embodiment, which he believes makes V.R. fundamentally different from all other media. Embodied virtual experience, the philosophers write, can change us profoundly. It can affect us in ways we barely understand, redefining “the very relationship we have to our own minds.”

As soon as virtual reality became workable, in the early nineteen-eighties, researchers imagined creating vivid, detailed, hallucinogenic worlds. In the memoir “ Dawn of the New Everything ,” the V.R. pioneer Jaron Lanier recalls evangelizing the technology by describing a virtual two-hundred-foot-tall amethyst octopus with an opening in its head; inside would be a furry cave with a bed that hugs you while you sleep. (“Virtual reality tugs at the soul because it answers the cries of childhood,” Lanier writes.) Later, the “ Matrix ” movies imagined a virtual world so accurate as to be indistinguishable from real life. Today’s most advanced V.R. video games conjure visually rich space stations (Lone Echo), deserts (Arizona Sunshine), and rock faces (The Climb). The goal is to convince you that you are somewhere else.

Virtual embodiment has a different goal: convincing you that you are someone else. This doesn’t require fancy graphics. Instead, it calls for tracking hardware—which allows your virtual body to accurately mirror the movements of your real head, feet, and hands—and a few minutes of guided, Tai Chi-like movement before a virtual mirror. In Slater’s lab, at the Universitat de Barcelona, I put on a V.R. headset and looked into such a mirror to see the body of a young woman wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and ballet flats. When I moved, she moved.

“You’re going to see a number of floating spheres, and you have to touch them,” Guillermo Iruretagoyena, a software developer, said.

A few colorful balls appeared near my hands and feet, and I moved my limbs to touch them. The spheres disappeared, and new ones took their place. After I touched the new spheres, Iruretagoyena explained that the “embodiment phase” was complete—I had tricked my brain into thinking that the virtual limbs were mine. My virtual self didn’t feel particularly real. The quality of the virtual world was on a par with a nineteen-nineties video game, and when I leaned into the mirror to make eye contact with myself my face was planar and cartoonish. Like a vampire’s, my body cast no shadow.

To my right, I heard the sound of keys in a door. I turned and saw a hallway. At the end of it, a man entered, with dark hair and a beige sweater.

“You fat cow,” he said, in a low voice. “Would it hurt to put on something nice?”

He began walking toward me. I looked at myself in the mirror. “Look at me!” he shouted. He walked up to a dresser, saw my cell phone, and threw it against the wall.

I watched, merely interested. It was obvious that he was a virtual person; I was no more intimidated by him than I would be by an image on a screen. Then he got closer, and closer still, invading my personal space. In real life, I’m tall, but I found myself craning my neck to look up at him. As he loomed over me, gazing into my eyes, I leaned away and held my breath. I could sense my heart racing, my chest tightening, and sweat breaking out on my temples. I felt physically threatened, as though my actual body were in danger. “This isn’t real,” I told myself. Still, I felt afraid.

Since 2011, the regional government of Catalonia has collaborated with the lab to use this simulation in rehabilitation programs for abusive men. In a controlled study performed in Sanchez-Vives’s lab by the psychologist Sofia Seinfeld, and recently published in Nature’s Scientific Reports , the men who experienced the simulation got significantly better at recognizing fear in the faces of women. (Domestic abusers tend to be deficient in this regard.) In the past three years, hundreds more abusive men have experienced the simulation outside the lab, as part of a larger rehabilitation program. Preliminary data, which Sanchez-Vives and Slater are hesitant to publish because of the small sample size, suggest that the men’s recidivism rates are lower. (“I felt identified with my ex-wife,” one man recalled. “I thought he was going to hit me, so I covered my face with one of my hands,” another said.) Men who have merely watched a video, or experienced a V.R. simulation without undergoing the embodiment process, report fewer such epiphanies.

Slater, a slight, soft-spoken Englishman in his sixties with a youthful, amazed demeanor—he could be an especially placid incarnation of the Doctor, in “Doctor Who”—walked me to the campus coffee bar. At a table by the window, he tried to explain how virtual embodiment might effect such changes. “No one really understands what this technology is and how it can be used,” he said. “On some level, the brain doesn’t know the difference between real reality and virtual reality. And a character on a 2-D screen is completely different from one that’s your height and looks you in the eye.”

With a team of various collaborators, Slater and Sanchez-Vives have created many other-body simulations; they show how inhabiting a new virtual body can produce meaningful psychological shifts. In one study, participants are re-embodied as a little girl. Surrounded by a stuffed bear, a rocking horse, and other toys, they watch as their mother sternly demands a cleaner room. Afterward, on psychological tests, they associate themselves with more childlike characteristics. (When I tried it, under the supervision of the V.R. researcher Domna Banakou, I was astonished by my small size, and by the intimidating, Olympian height from which the mother addressed me.) In another, white participants spend around ten minutes in the body of a virtual black person, learning Tai Chi. Afterward, their scores on a test designed to reveal unconscious racial bias shift significantly. “These effects happen fast, and seem to last,” Slater said. A week later, the white participants still had less racist attitudes. (The racial-bias results have been replicated several times in Barcelona, and also by a second team, in London.) Embodied simulations seem to slip beneath the cognitive threshold, affecting the associative, unconscious parts of the mind. “It’s directly experiential,” Slater said. “It’s not ‘I know.’ It’s ‘I am.’ ”

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Slater envisages salubrious, even beatific ways of learning through virtual embodiment. “Imagine if you’re afraid of public speaking. Now you can experience being embodied as Angelina Jolie and giving a speech in front of thousands of cheering people,” he said. (The confidence you feel while embodied as Jolie would, he thinks, follow you back into your own body.) In 2015, for an art exhibit at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Slater’s team built a virtual reality in which participants lived together on a psychedelic tropical island, embodied as elegant humanoids reminiscent of the blue Na’vi, from “ Avatar .” In the course of an hour and a half, their virtual bodies grew old and died; after death, the participants reviewed their virtual lives in a flashback, then floated upward into a tunnel of white light. When they took off their headsets, they watched, on a screen, as their island compatriots built a memorial to them. People who have near-death experiences emerge with new ideas about the meaning of life; Slater’s lab is studying whether virtual death might have a similar effect. “We were trying to play with the implicit idea that there could be immortality, and that this life is a virtual life—as though, after we die, we take off our headsets and are on another plane,” he said.

Virtual embodiment isn’t always uplifting. In 2015, the video-game company Capcom released Kitchen, a virtual-reality horror scenario in which the player is tied to a chair while a deranged woman plunges a knife into his thigh. In the V.R. game Surgeon Simulator, players use power drills, bone saws, and other tools to vivisect a humanoid alien that writhes in pain on the operating table. As in most V.R. video games, players in Kitchen and Surgeon Simulator move in fanciful ways and are, at best, semi-embodied. Even so, in the book “ Experience on Demand ,” Jeremy Bailenson, a leading V.R.-embodiment researcher at Stanford, reports that after performing a virtual vivisection he “simply felt bad. Responsible. I had used my hands to do violence.” Pushing a Punch or Shoot button on a game controller and watching the results on a screen, he writes, is “an entirely different experience” from playing an immersive, first-person V.R. game in which you use your virtual arms and hands to strike or stab an opponent, or to aim a gun at him and pull the trigger. In their V.R. code of ethics, Metzinger and Madary predict that the “risk of users suffering psychological trauma will steadily increase as V.R. technology advances.” Metzinger believes that virtual killing and sexual violence should be prohibited. He also worries about scenarios that encourage the character traits that psychologists refer to as “the dark triad”: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. He fears the effects of a V.R. “Westworld.”

“It’s inevitable what’s going to happen,” Slater said, over coffee. “There’s going to be a moral panic around V.R. as it spreads and spreads, just as there was with comics, with television. It’s going to be the root of every evil, and there’s going to be a huge campaign against it. I hope the companies realize this, because they have to be prepared for it.” Slater, who led the Virtual Embodiment and Robotic Re-Embodiment project and, with the other researchers, worked with Metzinger on the V.R. code of ethics, thinks some caution is justified: “Virtual reality is going to be quite widespread, and in the home. And although it’s been around in more or less the form it is now for thirty, forty years, with head-mounted displays, and so forth, there’s nobody who’s spent hours and hours, week after week, month after month, in virtual reality. Nobody knows what’s going to happen.”

After our coffee, Slater walked me back to the lab. It was an unusually cold day, and the campus was hushed and empty. Jaron Lanier writes in his memoir that the best part of V.R. comes after you remove the headset: having been immersed in a comparatively flat computer-generated world, one finds that, in real life, “the most ordinary surface, cheap wood or plain dirt, is bejeweled in infinite detail for a short while.” As we walked, I was spellbound by pine needles and by the texture of concrete. I marvelled at the Escher-like dimensionality of a stairway, and at the snowflakes that had begun to drift among the palm trees.

Inside, I followed Slater up a flight of stairs. On the landing, we passed a tall humanoid robot with expressive eyes; its metal skeleton was visible beneath white plastic skin. In a nearby lab, Laura Aymerich, a psychologist, and Sameer Kishore, a roboticist, helped me into a skintight Velcro suit covered in white plastic dots. I put on headphones and a V.R. headset. The headphones were silent, and the headset was dark. For a few minutes, I stood there, alone with my thoughts.

“Sorry,” Kishore said. “Technical difficulties.”

Then the headset activated, and I appeared to be on the landing, by the stairs outside the lab. I was looking through the eyes and hearing through the ears of the robot. Kishore wheeled a small standing mirror into position so that I could see myself. To my surprise, my face—the robot’s face—was now lit from within and glowing blue.

The robot’s movements tracked mine; I moved my robotic arms up and down, and my head from side to side. When I looked to my left, I saw Slater, standing by the stairs; when I looked to my right, I could see through a window to the courtyard, where snowflakes floated. There was a slight lag between my head movements and the robot’s, and when I perceived it I felt half-embodied, as if I’d had too much to drink.

“The visual aspect of it is strong, but the sensorimotor aspect of it is conflicting,” Kishore said. “If you’re trying to move your head and it doesn’t move, that leads to a break in the feeling of embodiment.” I was only half paying attention; I was transfixed by the robot’s metal hands, which seemed to move when I willed them to. With both my heads, I nodded.

Aymerich appeared in my field of view. “High five!” she said. We high-fived. She crossed over to my other side. “Now shake hands,” she said. We shook. Because there was no way for sensation to travel from the robot’s hands to mine, the handshake was a purely visual experience. Aymerich walked away, then returned, holding up my coat. “Reach out and touch your jacket,” she said. Slowly, I extended my arm, watching as my metal fingers moved toward the fabric. When they reached it, I was startled by a tingling sensation in my fingertips—a phantom touch.

“I feel something,” I said. I concentrated on the feeling. It was really there—a warm, swirling electricity.

In the eighteenth century, the philosopher George Berkeley argued that reality was all in our minds. Samuel Johnson had no patience for this idea; he declared, “I refute it thus!” and kicked a stone. Two centuries later, the poet Richard Wilbur wrote a rejoinder:

Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones: But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.

“It’s not real, but it doesn’t matter,” Slater said, watching me. “In some sense, it’s a real experience.”

To Thomas Metzinger, a phrase like “real experience” is a riddle to be solved. Now sixty, he resembles a German Steve Jobs, with short, steel-gray hair, architectural glasses, and a stern, sculptural face; sleek and fit, he has the formidable, watchful serenity of someone who has meditated twice a day for forty-one years. “I have a long story to tell,” he said, in a gentle German accent. “I think that, in the human self-model, there are many layers. Some layers are transparent, like your bodily perceptions, which seem absolutely real. You just look”—he gestured toward a chair next to us—“and the chair is there. Others are opaque, like our cognitive layer. When we’re thinking, we know that our thoughts are internal mental constructs, which could be true or false.” As a philosopher, Metzinger’s method has been to see if the transparent can be made opaque. In books such as “ Being No One ” and “ The Ego Tunnel ,” he aims to show that aspects of our experience which we take to be real are actually “complex forms of virtual reality” created by our brains.

Imagine that you are sitting in the cockpit of an airplane, surrounded by instruments and controls. It’s a futuristic cockpit, with no windows; where the windshield would be, a computer displays the landscape. Using this cockpit, you can pilot your plane with ease. Still, there are questions you are unable to answer. Exactly what kind of plane are you flying? (It could be a Boeing 777 or an Airbus A380.) How accurate is the landscape on the screen? (Perhaps night-vision software has turned night to day.) When you throttle up the engines, you feel a rumbling and hear a roar. Does this mean the plane is accelerating—or could those effects have been simulated? Both scenarios might be true. You could be using a flight simulator to fly a real plane. This, in Metzinger’s view, is how we live our lives.

The instruments in an airplane cockpit report on pitch, yaw, speed, fuel, altitude, engine status, and so on. Our human instruments report on more complicated variables. They tell us about physical facts: the status of our bodies and limbs. But they also report on mental states: on what we are sensing, feeling, and thinking; on our intentions, knowledge, and memories; on where and who we are. You might wonder who is sitting in the cockpit, controlling everything. Metzinger thinks that no one is sitting there. “We” are the instruments, and our sense of selfhood is the sum of their readouts. On the instrument panel, there is a light with a label that says “Pilot Present.” When the light is on, we are self-conscious; we experience being in the cockpit and monitoring the instruments. It’s easy to assume that, while you’re awake, this light is always on. In fact, it’s frequently off—during daydreams, during much of our mental life, which is largely automatic and unconscious—and the plane still flies.

Two facts about the cockpit are of special importance. The first is that although the cockpit controls the airplane, it is not itself an airplane. It’s only a simulation—a model—of a larger, more complex, and very different machine. The implication of this fact is that the stories we tell about what happens in the cockpit—“I pulled up on the stick”; “I touched my jacket”—are very different from the reality of what is happening to the system as a whole. The second fact, harder to grasp, is that we cannot see the cockpit. Even as we consult its models of the outer and inner worlds, we don’t experience ourselves as doing so; we experience ourselves as simply existing. “You cannot recognize your self-model as a model,” Metzinger writes, in “Being No One.” “It is transparent: you look right through it. You don’t see it. But you see with it.” Our mental models of reality are like V.R. headsets that we don’t know we are wearing. Through them, we experience our own inner lives and have inner sensations that feel as solid as stone. But in truth:

Nobody ever was or had a self. All that ever existed were conscious self-models that could not be recognized as models. . . . You are such a system right now. . . . As you read these sentences, you constantly confuse yourself with the content of the self-model activated by your brain.

When I first encountered the ideas in “Being No One,” many years ago, I thought I understood them. I had read about amputees who feel the presence of “phantom limbs,” and it made sense to think that this was because their body models were out of synch with reality. I accepted that the same could be true of our inner states—just as a person without an arm can experience its presence, so a person without free will might experience using it because her “self-model” includes the idea of making choices. And yet it wasn’t until I visited Slater’s lab that the full force of these ideas struck me. While embodied as a robot, I had felt a phantom touch—a real-seeming product of my body model—and this had unnerved me. But wasn’t I feeling phantom touches all the time? Whenever I experienced an emotion, had a thought, or made a choice, wasn’t I interacting with a fiction, a story that my self-model was telling me about an infinitely stranger, perhaps impersonal process unfolding in my brain? My inner world was virtual, too.

In a Frankfurt cake shop—“They say this is where Adorno took the women he seduced; many historical conversations happened here!”—Metzinger teased out the implications of this view of existence. “Do you know what an ‘illusion of control’ is?” he asked, mischievously. “If people are asked to throw dice, and their task is to throw a high number, they throw the dice harder!” He believes that many experiences of being in control are similarly illusory, including experiences in which we seem to control our own minds. Brain imaging, for example, shows that our thoughts begin before we’re aware of having them. But, Metzinger said, “if a thought crosses the boundary from unconsciousness to consciousness, we feel, ‘I caused this thought.’ ” The sensation of causing our own thoughts is also just another feature of the self-model—a phantom sensation conjured when a readout, labelled “thinking,” switches from “off” to “on.” If you suffer from schizophrenia, this readout may be deactivated inappropriately, and you may feel that someone else is causing your thoughts. “The mind has to explain to itself how it works,” he said, spreading his hands.

Lately, Metzinger has been thinking about his own experience as a meditator. At the center of the meditative experience is the exercise and cultivation of mental autonomy: when the meditator’s mind wanders, he notices and arrests that process, gently returning his mental focus to his breath. “The mind says, ‘I am now re-directing the flashlight of my attention to this,’ ” Metzinger said. “But the thought ‘I am redirecting my mind-wandering’ might itself be another inner story.” He leaned back in his chair and laughed. “It might be that the spiritual endeavor for liberation or detachment can lead to new illusions.”

He looked at me reassuringly. “This doesn’t mean that nothing is real,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that this is the Matrix—the simulation is running on some hardware. But it does mean that you are not the model . You are the whole system—the physical, biological organism in which the self-model is rendered, including its body, its social relationships, and its brain. The model is just a part of that system.” The “I” we experience is smaller than, and different from, the totality of who and what we are.

It turns out that we do, in this sense, possess subtle bodies; we also inhabit subtle selves. While a person exists, he feels that he knows the world and himself directly. In fact, he experiences a model of the world and inhabits a model of himself. These models are maintained by the mind in such a way that their constructed nature is invisible. But it can sometimes be made visible, and then—to a degree—the models can be changed. Something about this discovery is deflating: it turns out that we are less substantial than we thought. Yet it can also be invigorating to understand the constructed, provisional nature of experience. Our perceptions of the world and the self feel real—how could they feel otherwise?—but we can come to understand our own role in the creation of their apparent realness. “The compensation of growing old,” Virginia Woolf writes, in “Mrs. Dalloway,” is that, while “the passions remain as strong as ever,” we gain “the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,—the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it around, slowly, in the light.”

In embodied virtual reality, it’s sometimes possible to glimpse yourself as the virtual object you really are. In Slater’s lab, two psychologists, Solène Neyret and Tania Johnston, helped me into a V.R. headset. The day before, I had been scanned by an imaging system; now, inside the virtual world, I looked into the virtual mirror to see a virtual version of myself, wearing my clothes: blue shirt, gray jeans, brown boots.

“I need you to think of a personal problem that is causing a bit of distress in your life,” Neyret said, while I went through a few embodiment exercises. “You will explain the problem to Freud. Then, when you finish speaking, you will press this button”—she guided my hand to a controller—“and you will enter Freud’s body. Listen carefully to yourself, and try to give yourself some advice.”

The virtual world shifted. I was sitting at a desk in an expansive, glass-walled house. Outside, wildflowers punctuated a sunlit lawn. Across from me, behind his own desk, sat Sigmund Freud. There was a large red light on my desk. It turned green.

I paused, uncertain how to begin. “My mother is in a nursing home, and when I get updates from people who visit her I feel guilty,” I said.

I pushed the button, and the world shifted again. Now I was Freud. I looked down at myself—white shirt, gray suit—and, in a nearby mirror, inspected my beard. Across from me, behind a desk, sat my avatar, wearing a blue shirt, gray jeans, and brown boots. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He settled his hands in his lap and looked at them.

“My mother is in a nursing home, and when I get updates from people who visit her I feel guilty,” he said, in my voice.

Watching him, I felt fascination, curiosity, and pity. Was that me? He seemed like another person—a stranger. “Why do you feel guilty?” I asked, as Freud.

I pushed the button. Now I was sitting across the desk from Freud. I watched as he watched me, cocking his head. “Why do you feel guilty?” he asked. His voice was strange—older and lower than mine.

“Because I live far away,” I said, as me.

I pushed the button.

“Why do you live far away?” I asked, as Freud. “Is there a good reason?”

Soon, I fell into a rhythm. Freud and I talked for about twenty minutes. He was insightful; he said things that I’d never said to myself, in ordinary life. When I took off the headset, I was moved. I wanted to tell myself, “Good talk.” From his perspective, I’d seemed different: sadder, more ordinary and comprehensible. I told myself to remember that version of me.

I looked up to see Slater, standing with Neyret and Johnston. “I think it accesses aspects of yourself that you’ve repressed,” he said.

“It changes completely the judgment you usually apply to your internal thoughts,” Neyret said.

“It’s because you’re physically outside of yourself, and you see yourself and hear yourself talking,” Slater said. “Your natural instinct, when you see someone in front of you describing a problem, is to help them. The fact that it’s you is kind of irrelevant.”

“I didn’t feel like I was talking to myself,” I said. “It felt like a real conversation. How can that be?”

“Maybe we can have many selves,” Slater said, raising an eyebrow.

Before arriving in Barcelona, I had asked Slater and Sanchez-Vives if I might try a virtual out-of-body experience. Later that day, in another part of the lab, I sat in a chair while three researchers—Pierre Bourdin, Itsaso Barberia, and Ramon Oliva—attached small vibrating motors to my wrists and ankles. Inside the V.R. headset, I saw a virtual room, with a coffee table and a working fireplace. In the virtual mirror in front of me, I saw an unsettling image: a man in a black Velcro suit, his eyes hidden behind a black V.R. headset. This was me, as I existed in the real world.

“You’ll see some shapes on the coffee table,” Bourdin said. “Trace them with your feet.”

I heard the clicking of a computer mouse. Shapes like hieroglyphs appeared on the table, and I traced them.

“Next, you’ll see some bouncing spheres,” Oliva said. The mouse clicked, and small blue spheres began dancing around my body. Thanks to the motors, I felt them, light and soft, when they touched me.

“Try moving your arms and legs,” Oliva said. I did, and the spheres followed.

For a few minutes, I sat enjoying my strange surroundings. Then, without warning, my point of view began to move. I was pulling backward, out of myself. First, I saw the back of my head, and then my body from behind. I began drifting toward the ceiling. From there, I looked down at my body in its chair, surrounded by swirling spheres. In my mind, silence reigned. No thoughts were equal to the experience. I didn’t feel that I had left my body; I felt that my body had left me. When I took off the headset, Slater and Bourdin were watching me. “How was it?” Slater asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“How do you feel?” Bourdin asked.

“Weird,” I said.

“Some people have really strong experiences,” Bourdin said. “There’s shouting. They grab the chair.” He paused. “I think it gives you the implicit idea that you can separate your body from your soul. It’s about the fear of death.”

I nodded, cradling the headset in my hands.

In Frankfurt, over lunch at a Persian restaurant, I described my virtual experiences to Metzinger. I wanted to know if they had been real. Had my virtual-reality O.B.E. been a real experience? What about the sensation of touching my jacket? Had it been real?

“It’s a big question, when the word ‘real’ makes sense,” Metzinger said. His brow furrowed. “An interesting possibility is that the whole distinction between real and unreal is misguided.” He gestured toward the flame of the candle on the table between us. “In Buddhist metaphysics, there is the idea of ‘emptiness.’ To realize the emptiness of things is to say, ‘This is neither real nor nonexistent.’ Our perception of the candle refers to something real, in the real world. But this candle—the one we see—it’s mental content. And yet it’s also not true that the experience, the model in our minds, is unreal. It’s ‘empty.’ ‘Empty’ may have been their way of saying that it’s just a virtual model. ‘Emptiness’ could be ‘virtuality.’ ”

Listening, I rubbed the fabric of my jacket between my fingers. The jacket was real, as were my fingers. But the exact feeling of the jacket between them, which existed, solid but cloudy in my mind—perhaps that was empty.

Metzinger had ordered Persian coffee, and it arrived on an ornate silver tray. Between the tiny, elegant cups, nearly overflowing with coffee, were dates dusted with sugar. Our waitress gave us instructions in German. “ Danke schön ,” Metzinger said. “She says to have a date, then to have a sip of coffee, because that contrasts the bitterness with the sweetness.” I tried a date, brushed the sugar from my fingers, and sipped my coffee. She was right.

It was getting late, and we set out for a stroll in the park. As we walked, Metzinger wondered how virtual reality, by changing how we experience ourselves, might influence religion and art. “Could you experience your sense of self as empty?” he asked. “As in, there’s no self there—no control? In my own life, I find states like this tend to have a beginning and an end.” A smile broke through the severity of his expression. He laughed. “You know, the coolest thing in Mel Slater’s lab—I was sitting in a room in V.R. There was a crackling fire, a big mirror. And they hadn’t switched the avatar on. And I looked down, and there was no body. The chair was empty. I liked that!”

The park was still and beautiful. It had rained the night before, and the sandy paths were wet. The sun was low, and our footsteps crunched on the sand. A boy rode his bicycle through a puddle; we heard the water lapping. I felt tired and excited—full of ideas. The sky was blue. The grass was green. ♦

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Towards a ‘virtual’ world: Social isolation and struggles during the COVID‐19 pandemic as single women living alone

1 Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, UK

2 Huddersfield Business School, University of Huddersfield, UK

This article is a personal reflection of how the current COVID‐19 pandemic affects our working lives and wellbeing, as single female academics who live alone in the UK. We offer a dialogue of our daily lives of being confined at home with lockdown measures extended. In particular, we focus on the experience of, and coping with, isolation and loneliness. Is isolation making us more socially connected? Through ‘virtual’ working and changing learning environments for us as teachers and learners, we explore changes in our working life and subsequent changes in the domestic environment. By capturing our lived experiences, we create an intellectual and safe space to voice our emotional struggles — as ‘invisible’ isolated individuals containing and consuming loneliness on our own. We foster alternative conversations as to how we might engender new perspectives from single female academics to combat social isolation in the workplace.

1. BEGINNING

As we sit at our dining tables pondering how we should construct an article to reflect on our lived experiences after the country‐wide lockdown in the UK beginning on 23 March, and its consequences on our working‐life balance during the COVID‐19 pandemic, we realized that we are alone. With the doors closed, we are protected against possible infections and reminded of the UK government advice on social distancing — in an attempt to slow the transmission of the disease in the community, and protect ourselves and others from this illness. Consequently, our mobility of free movement and human contact are severely restricted. This causes us to reflect on the negative impact of these measures on our physical and psychological wellbeing as single women and early career researchers, who live alone. Isolation changes the way we work and connect with others, requiring us to dedicate ourselves socially to the same screens that host our daily work meetings, teaching and research activities; it aggravates loneliness and causes us to become increasingly worried about our psychological as well as our physical wellbeing. In this article we reflect on the wider meaning of our personal experiences beyond the dining room of our homes.

This personal reflection is provoked by the contestation of ideologies about ‘adaptive’ and ‘unproblematic’ women and the visible resurgence of feminist organizational scholarship (e.g., Bell, Meriläinen, Taylor, & Tienari,  2020 ; Gill, Kelan, & Scharff,  2017 ; Lewis & Simpson,  2017 ; Ozkazanc‐Pan,  2018 ), which is crucial in understanding the experiences of working life. Bell, Meriläinen, Taylor, and Tienari ( 2018 ) argue that narratives of feminism are often ‘whitewashed’ in ways which simplify tensions and overlook multiple voices across space and time. Beyond conventional linear chronological narratives, Raewyn Connell's keynote speech at the GWO Sydney conference reminded us that:

the new generation of scholars [needs] to be bold. Don’t get stuck in familiar models of gender, not even mine. Share your ideas and findings, and work cooperatively. Feminist movements have flourished the more they have worked as collectives, however informal or imperfect. (Pullen, Lewis, & Ozkazanc‐Pan,  2019 , p. 6)

In other words, feminist frontiers mark a shift away from a focus on equality to a focus on fostering alternative dialogues that celebrate differences and collective resistance, and address the demands of marginalized, diasporic cultures across national and other borders. We are inspired by these feminisms that seek to give voice to the overlooked in different places and spaces, at different times. We use this to outline the contours of our distinctive sensibilities, stemming from feminism values and practices, and to focus on opening up repressed thoughts, voices and vulnerabilities about the patterned nature of lockdown life. We reflect on our work experiences and personal stories during the COVID‐19 pandemic that we are currently living through — as early career researchers, as teachers and learners, as readers and writers, and most importantly here, as single women living alone. Through this we seek to explore the role of complex feelings and emotions on our thinking, learning and being.

Feminist and civil rights activist Audre Lorde ( 2007 ) once observed that, ‘there is no such thing as a single‐issue struggle because we do not live single‐issue lives’ (p. 138). Feminist frontiers critiques allow us to address what is typically left unsaid when writers learn to assume the normalcy of masculine notions of ‘rigor’, ‘hardness’ and ‘penetrating conclusiveness’ (Phillips, Pullen, & Rhodes,  2014 , p. 316) through adherence to a ‘logic of trajectory, strategy and purpose’ (Höpfl,  2011 , p. 32). This starts to render gendered writing open for discussion. It turns attention to enabling multitudes of affectual voices and texts by creating intellectual spaces to capture and convey different forms of expression (Pullen & Rhodes,  2015 ). Yet male voices are dominating current ‘scientific and strategic’ responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic, and the responses of many institutions to the pandemic are increasingly constructed by masculinist politics.

Contemporary feminist theory offers potential change (e.g., intersectional issues) regarding gendered norms that directly influence how we think and what we write in the field of Organization Studies and beyond (e.g., Strauβ & Boncori,  2020 ; Wieners & Weber,  2020 ). Yet, dominant patriarchal discourses have a direct influence on passive coping styles across institutions. Thus, this piece of writing is a form of personal resistance against normalized practices in scholarly communities. It uses feminism as a lens to explore and rethink the multiplicity of lives and livelihoods of single women who live alone. It recognizes and draws attention to the suppressed thoughts, voices and realities of single women who live alone during the lockdown. We call for further exploration on this topic as a reminder of reaching this group of people, who maybe are struggling with social isolation and intensified workloads but are often overlooked in the neoliberal academia.

2. THE NEVER‐ENDING SHIFT TOWARDS A ‘VIRTUAL WORKSPACE’

Prior to the COVID‐19 pandemic, as technology enabled more virtual working, more people have been working outside the traditional workspace. According to the Office of National Statistics Labour Force Survey, there were more than 1.5 million people working remotely for their main jobs in the UK in 2019. Many organizations claim to have shifted towards virtual working to cut operational costs and attract and retain top personnel (Bailey & Kurland,  2002 ). In other words, virtual working is presented as a by‐product of information communication technologies and a way of solving business problems. Consequently, there has been an increased interest among organizational scholarship on the impact of virtual working in the past two decades (Collins, Hislop, & Cartwright,  2016 ; Garrett, Spreitzer, & Bacevice,  2017 ; Wang, Albert, & Sun,  2020 ). Unlike virtual workers who still have access to traditional workspaces, where ‘most employees work in office, but … have the option of working virtually at least part‐time’ (Bartel, Wrzesniewski, & Wiesenfeld,  2012 , p. 744), since the lockdown, the universities where we work have been closed completely with no access to offices or other physical facilities. All work including teaching and administrative tasks has been moved online. We no longer have access to our workplace.

One week before the announcement of lockdown, university teaching has been switched online. The Information Communication Technology team worked around the clock to get software and equipment ready for online teaching and communication. Many of us were getting used to work from home. I spent the weekend turning my living room into a video/audio‐friendly virtual working space, and minimising background distractions, such as messy piled up clothes on the sofa. Once I cleaned up and organised fairly acceptable to face the webcam, I started to join webinars dedicated to training us on‐screen recording software and other virtual tools for continued work. I stay connected with my line manager, team members and colleagues using technology . I reminded myself to take frequent breaks and try to structure my day as much as possible in order to find a new ‘normal’.

The preparations for working in a virtual environment on a full‐time basis were intensive and relied centrally on technology to enable online social interactions. This was presented as a way of developing our professional skills that could benefit us in the long run.

Since the lockdown, I no longer have access to spontaneous conversations and interactions with colleagues whom I share an office with. I won’t be able to chat with other colleagues in the kitchen or corridor where we usually share thoughts and practices on teaching and research.

As early career researchers, we acknowledged the challenges for our professional development as a result of the lockdown. We have reflected the importance of the taken‐for‐granted human contact which is vital for our thinking and being. We are aware that as virtual workers we will miss out on informal learning of work‐related skills through spontaneous conversation with colleagues (Cooper & Kurland,  2002 ).

In addition, we also recognized our behaviour changes in the domestic environment.

Nowadays I have to spend more time cleaning up my messy apartment and cooking for both weekdays and weekends. Prior to the pandemic, I never cooked as I live alone. I usually ordered food from restaurants or picked‐up something to eat when I headed back home from the office. I also have cleaners do housekeeping, but now, it is unavailable under lockdown. Despite seeming just routine stuff, it takes more time for me to finish these normal tasks now.

To keep a normal work routine and a balanced work and home life, in the first week of the lockdown, I woke up around the same time. I dressed up and wore makeup, as I would if I was going to work. I started my workday at the same time as I would in my office. A few weeks down the road, I realised that I spend more time in pyjamas and nightgowns than clothes.

These short stories trace the subtle behavioural changes that we have experienced as a consequence of the blurring of boundaries between work and home (Daniel, Domenico, & Nunan,  2018 ).

3. ISOLATION AND LONELINESS: PHYSICALLY DETACHING FROM OUR WORKPLACES AND ORGANIZATIONS

Being academics, we are used to working flexibly to juggle our teaching, researching, writing and administrative responsibilities. But as time passes, we both experience a flood of feelings of social and emotional isolation as the lockdown extends and we immerse ourselves in our virtual workspaces. As single women isolated at home, we are alone. Yet we are social beings and feel the need to interact physically with others, to connect, relate and feel others’ feelings.

I am an introvert and used to work from home. Normally, I would spend at least one day a week working remotely from home on my research projects. Initially, the lifestyle shift after lockdown did not seem that different from my usual daily working routine. But now I am unable to get those small doses of face‐to‐face interaction with my colleagues, to have scheduled dinners with friends, or to enjoy the warmth of a big hug as I usually greet others. I realise that it's not just my ability to reason that has been negatively affected, as my thinking is often blocked, but the importance of human contact that makes me feel truly connected to the workplace and social networks.

We reflect on the effects of social isolation over time. Spending almost all of our time alone aggravates feelings of disconnectedness and loneliness, particularly for single female academics like us who live alone with no close family nearby. Isolation and loneliness have not been widely researched in the organizational contexts, even though these are one of the main challenges faced by virtual workers (Bartel et al.,  2012 ). Reflecting upon our experiences of extreme isolation without a provisional end date pushes us to rethink the very importance of having a family of our own:

Am I regretting being single? This is a question that I thought I would never ask myself. Questions like what if I started a family or at least have a partner, would that make any difference? Before the lockdown, I thought being alone is something I am quite comfortable with. However, choosing solitude is completely different from being forced into it. There was an option for me to socialise with others outside of my home prior to the pandemic, whereas now, being alone is my only option.

I compare myself with people who had a family, a partner, kids around them. Of course, they have their own issues to solve. But for me, being able to hug someone — as Boncori ( 2020 ) describes when she holds her baby as emotional security — is impossible for a single woman like me. I am alone and I am lonely.

Coping with isolation and loneliness during lockdown and social distancing as single women who live alone takes a lot of energy. Unlike women with partners, children or other family members living together in a household, we have no physical contact with anyone, even a cuddle with our loved ones. We must shoulder the financial burden on our own, so sometimes we worry about the future, about how life will be after the pandemic ends and wonder if there will still be a real life outside of our homes. Our reflection is not to undermine the difficulties and the potential impacts on their physical and mental wellbeing among those with family responsibilities, but to recognize the challenges and struggles that we face as single women who live alone, a group of individuals who rarely received attention in the scholarly community.

Loneliness is associated with feelings of lack of intimacy and emotional closeness, feelings of unloved, unaccepted and the experience of being misunderstood (Shaver & Mikulincer,  2014 ).

We are in the fourth week of the lockdown. I miss human contact, even just talking to someone on the street or someone in a supermarket. The weather these days is nice and sunny. I often hear kids playing in the garden next to my apartment. However, the increased number of confirmed cases and death toll means I have to suppress my desire to be social. The only time I go out is for my once a week grocery shopping. I only go out in the early morning to avoid social contact with others. I start to realise that I am afraid of going out.

Social distancing is challenging for many. But for single women who live alone it is a particular struggle, as they are isolated from family and community. One of us has expressed her mixed emotions in recent weeks, wrapped up with trying to stay calm and exercise self‐care. While she struggles with feelings of anxiety and loneliness, she feels compelled to reassure her close friends and family who show concern yet live far away.

Tracing back to early March, I was walking along Oxford Street in central London. It was business as usual in the boutiques and department stores. I received a voice message from my mother who lives in China, which was under provisional lockdown. She spoke with concern: ‘Do you have enough food in the apartment? You need to get some fresh food, things like milk, eggs, drinking water and frozen food as well as other necessities in case of lockdown measures being introduced with immediate effect like we have experienced.’ Yet the eggs, pasta, and toilet rolls shelves are empty in the supermarket. Soon after, it is announced on the news that members of the public are stockpiling food, medicine and other items. Fear is reshaping and reconstructing behaviour.

In light of the lengthy period of social isolation, understanding and exploring natural human desire to disengage the self from the collective society is more important than ever before. Loneliness can be destructive or restorative when there is a choice of solitude.

4. SILENCE OF LIVING ALONE IN A CITY GONE QUIET AND SILENCING

Living alone releases us from gendered caring, parenting and home‐schooling responsibilities. But solitude has always had an ambivalent status. David Vincent once argued that the ambivalent nature of solitude has become a prominent concern in the modern era. For us, as academics who hold feminist values, we are proud to speak as single women who live alone. We seek to alleviate loneliness and social isolation. Yet under the current COVID‐19 pandemic, solitude has taken on a new meaning.

The world has suddenly gone quiet and all my human contacts are online now. I live alone, seeking comfort in silence of solitude, but the silence is challenging. I used to enjoy being in control of my domain and my time, but this unprecedented level of isolation has called this into question.

While the search and desire for solitude is seen as a symptom of modern life that is socially bearable, under the current pandemic, the enforced isolation of living alone is beyond our capacity. Prolonged silence permeates the air, in the absence of others to communicate with and in pauses during virtual conversations. We have had to accept the silence, broken only by voices in the virtual world, which forces us to think carefully about whether and how to break the silence and fill the blank space of isolation.

The quiet I thought I would adapt to. But I can’t stand it. As the situation deteriorates, feelings of insecurity, fear and frustration are flooding through the community. A feeling of melancholy runs through my body. To protect myself, I have had to limit my exposure in the public domain. I stay alone in my apartment and I turn on the TV or music as long as I am awake. What comes out is the notion of drowning into the silence, being silenced by my reliance on expected engagement like face‐to‐face interactions, and being silenced by the aggravated loneliness under remote work.

In silence, it seems that our sensibilities and vulnerabilities are emerging, as we both reflect on our increased and changing media consumption. We find it becomes difficult to breathe day after day under lockdown. The content we choose to consume affects our feelings and psychological wellbeing.

With limited access to other people, I started to follow news more closely. The first thing I do when I open my eyes in the morning is reaching my phone and opening BBC news. This is one of my ways to interact with the world outside.

I have begun spending more time on following broadcasting news and updates on social media, but I have had to block my exposure to negativity and practice silence on social networks, as online abuse has increased since the coronavirus outbreak began. Chinese and people of other Asian origins have been particularly targeted. Toxic posts and comments on social media sites like Twitter and hashtag connecting China to coronavirus use terms like the ‘Chinese virus’ to accuse and blame us for carrying and spreading the virus. Racism connected to coronavirus has led to assaults in the UK, other European countries and the United States.

Appadurai ( 1996 ) claims that ‘where there is [media] consumption there is pleasure, and where there is pleasure there is agency’ which ‘when collective can become the fuel for action’ (p. 7). In the diasporic context, media could explain the generation of collective scattered imaginations, highlighting the shared aspects of individual identities regarding common culture, geography and history, binding us as being socially belonging to a particular social group and community. In other words, both authors have followed social media and news as ways to fill the paused moments created by silence. But can we assume such behavioural change in media consumption is connected to the shaping and reshaping of individual identities, community belongings and further resistance?

I ask myself, ‘why do I stay silent towards cyberbullying and attacks against Asians, as if it does not exist? Is it because of personal insecurity and/or the potential risks of voicing my thoughts? Is it because I am a single woman with a minority ethnicity in a country where I am labelled as different or “other”? Yes.’ I always try to keep my head down, especially now. I am trying to protect myself from being targeted, physically and psychologically.

Media reporting of racist attacks on Asians, women in particular, has increased significantly, as have accounts of the fume that inevitably attends these victims raising their voices. It is reported in recent news that a Chinese cyclist was in an attack cycling in Nottinghamshire, when a car slowed down next to her, throwing beer at her and laughed inside (BBC,  2020a , April 24). Another group of four Chinese students, aged in their twenties, were wearing face masks when they were attacked in Southampton (BBC,  2020b , March 22). A further aspect of the exposure to negativity involves us being devastated by the racially aggravated hate crimes connecting to coronavirus. The weakness and fear of violence further constrains us to keep our heads down when we go out and stay silent, assuming we live as usual and carry on our daily working life.

But this has to stop. We are sometimes accustomed to the privilege of being able to write about the oppressed voices of those who are marginalized. What we rarely discuss is whether we choose or are compelled to keep silent. One of the authors reflected on her latest participation in GWO writing workshop experiences in Helsinki when they discussed and dug deeper into the notion of silence related to multiple identities and pressures as foreign female academics in a male‐dominated culture. While silence is regarded as the expression of knowing and the inaudible manifestation of frailty of words, the power of silence in language arises from dispelling one's inside darkness, anxiety and void (Ahonen et al.,  2020 ).

I ask myself, ‘what are my identity/ies? How do my emotions influence my way of living as a single woman? How does this influence the content and way in which I teach as a response to the pandemic?’

Recognition of moments of silence is important when we move our face‐to‐face teaching activities to online delivery. We want to embrace the embodied and emotional experiences in these moments of silence, hidden behind screens. We want to engage, relate and resonate with our students in this unfamiliar teaching and learning environment by highlighting the unspoken thoughts and responses interwoven in silence. Yet, the reality is disappointing. Students are not engaging in online delivery in large numbers and the limited capacity of the Internet at home as well as the university's online systems means that conversations with students go very slowly.

I had a session where some students did not have a stable Internet connection and a working microphone/audio. We had to revert to written discussion which takes longer even if you type very fast. I figured that the silence can be disconcerting when you can’t see them. It seems we need to get used to giving students the space to think and write a response to a question. In another session, only two students attended. Three others logged on, but left immediately. I don’t know why this happened, perhaps because they were shy or did not have their audio switched on. I can use the share content tool to upload and present PowerPoint slides and share a Chrome tab to play a video. Neither of the students had looked at the preparatory materials beforehand. In the end, we discussed their assignment.

Silence not only appears between academics and students but also among academics themselves in an informal setting.

As a way to keep in touch during the pandemic, monthly coffee meetings in the business school have switched to daily virtual coffee meetings, a virtual place where staff get together. I noticed that unlike other virtual meetings with specific agenda, the virtual coffee meetings have many silent gaps. A sense of awkwardness infuses the virtual environment. I wonder if this is because people are trying to avoid talking over each other or are they uncomfortable with expressing their opinions in these supposedly casual conversations? I keep silent and watch people leave during these silent moments.

We recognize the absence of words, even during informal conversations, as a silencing. We identify the reasons for being silent — as related to being labelled as different from others, allowing overwhelming feelings of insecurity to rise up. Fear of being interpreted as inappropriate, fear of being harshly criticized or offended drags us into silence. But it does not mean we stop thinking or being noisy in our heads.

In this reflection, we have touched on neglected voices and things that have been left unsaid; we have interpreted feminism in pandemic times as a distinctive sensibility that focuses on speaking up and voicing suppressed but vivid emotions; we have perceived feminism as beyond any single woman's choices and ideas of empowerment. In this way, we have tried to open up a way of articulating the lived experience of two single women, early career academics who live alone in this pandemic.

DECLARATION OF CONFLICTING INTERESTS

The authors have nothing to disclose and no conflicts of interest.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Both authors contributed equally to the article.

Biographies

Grace Gao is an Associate Lecturer at Newcastle Business School. Her research focuses on the gendered nature of non‐traditional employment manifest in its inherent masculinity and other forms of difference.

Linna Sai is a Lecturer at Huddersfield Business School. Her research focuses on the complex emotional response of members of an organisation that is undergoing change.

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Virtual Life vs Real Life: The Big Differences

The concept of virtual life has existed much longer than the technology that today makes it a part of our daily life. The concept of the virtual has long infiltrated the minds of intellectuals in many forms, such as that proposed by Descartes.

However, it is only recently that the concept of the virtual has truly taken off. For the time being, with growing technology and a world that is more unstable than ever, the virtual world has evolved swiftly. The virtual is becoming increasingly similar to reality, and we may soon be unable to discern between the two.

While it is obvious that we now have some notion of the distinction between the real world and the virtual world, the differences are considerably smaller than they were previously.

Virtual Life vs Real Life

1. differences.

Traditionally, the distinction between the virtual and real worlds was based on the concept of complete physical identity or body – that in the virtual world, your mind was divorced from your body, and so the distinction between the virtual and real was the physical form.

However, the same way this viewpoint is gradually fading, and many people today believe that the virtual cannot be separated from the real in terms of embodiment or physicality. This is a viewpoint shared by the researcher, and it will be one of the essay’s key points of attention.

The concept of risk is another area that might be used to distinguish between the virtual and the real. Risk is one of the few ideas that appear to differ across the virtual and actual worlds, at least in some circumstances. Although this distinction is narrowing, it appears possible to distinguish between the virtual and actual worlds using the concept of risk.

The first section of this essay will examine how the virtual has supplanted many aspects of the real world in our lives, and how these regions can no longer be easily distinguished. These routine, everyday events are now both real and virtual at the same time, with no perceptible difference.

The second section of the essay will look at the concept of physicality in the virtual world and how evidence reveals that the virtual and real worlds cannot be separated by the identity of the physical body.

The final section of the article will demonstrate that, despite the convergence of the virtual and the real, some differences must be made.

The concept of risk is used to distinguish the virtual from the actual, albeit this distinction is also being diminished and may be completely destroyed with the advent of future technology.

2. Virtual, Information, and Branding

Information and branding are two areas of our lives that have undergone a major change from the real to the virtual in the previous ten years. Previously, information was mostly preserved in real forms such as paper books.

However, the majority of information is now obtained virtually, via computers, radio and television, and other digital/ social media. Books and music may now be accessible as digital facsimiles of the originals, and our world has transitioned from real to virtual in terms of information.

This trend has progressed to the point where there is no discernible difference between the real and virtual reality of information. We regard paper books and music in the same manner that we regard digital e-books and mp3 music. They are perceptually extremely similar and carry the same information. The real and local have given way to the virtual and global in our world.

In terms of branding, the move from real to virtual has also occurred. Many real-world products today have such strong brand conceptions that we no longer think of the real object itself, but rather associate the virtual brand as the primary identity.

The brand is a virtual representation of the actual real items, yet it is virtually indistinguishable, especially in language terms. Shields describes the virtual as moving from something simply transformational and ambiguous to something prosaic and the most commonly argued distinction . In some spheres of life, the virtual has permeated or even supplanted the real, and the virtual is now indistinguishable from the real.

While it may be claimed that these virtual forms differ from their actual equivalents in terms of physical form (i.e. the virtual item has no physical palpable shape, whereas the real form does), this distinction in physicality is too small to be discernible in the cases of information and branding.

The virtual or digital form of a book has a physical form in the sense that the information may be printed out or used in a physical manner, just like a genuine paper book.

This is also true for branding, where virtual brand names are so inextricably linked to physical goods that they cannot be separated. In some circumstances, the virtual has surpassed the actual, obliterating the distinction between the two. As a result, there is no actual separation between virtual life and the real worlds in this field.

3. Physical Form in The Virtual World

The concept of physical form and identity is the most widely debated difference between the real and virtual worlds. Many claim that in the virtual world, you do not have a complete physical experiencing identity, and that the separation of your mind from your physical body is the difference between the actual and virtual worlds.

In other words, you have no genuine identity or physical interaction in the virtual world, whereas you do in the real world. Although it appears that the physical qualities that define our physical selves are not clearly visible in the virtual world, the physical self is not fully abandoned, and physical manifestations within the virtual world.

As Katie Argyle and Rob Shields (1996) point out, ‘presence’ does not simply evaporate in the virtual world, and new technology only mediates our physical presence. With new technology as it is today, and as it is expected to evolve in the future, we may now act holistically within the virtual world using our bodies.

Although it may appear that our bodies are not a part of the virtual world, we cannot escape our bodies. In other words, we do not lose our bodies in the virtual world; rather, we experience and engage with it through our bodies.

Argyle asserts that the feelings we experience when participating in the virtual world are real and corporeal. She uses her online presence ‘Kitty’ ( Argyle and Shields, 1996, in Kolko, p66) as an example, stating that the interactions she has with individuals, although being in a virtual environment, are real and felt in her body.

Argyle’s online connection reveals no separation from the body, implying that the actual body cannot be utilized to discern between real and virtual.

Ellen Ullman, who fell in love via email, agrees with this point of view. She only knew this individual through email and not through actual connection, but the virtual world provoked both real and physical sentiments in her.

Ullman distinguishes her online body from her ‘real’ one by stating that the love she felt was felt via her ‘virtual’ body, but she does not separate these two bodies, and the physical form remains tied to the online body or identity. (Ullman, 1996)

It appears that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to entirely separate your online persona from your actual and physical self when engaging online.

For example, in online games where players can send messages to one other in character, they may inquire about the person in ‘ real life , ‘ such as their age and origin.

People frequently become perplexed as to which ‘life’ the other person is referring to, therefore acronyms such as IC ( in character ) and IRL ( in real life ) have been developed to alleviate the misunderstanding ( in real life ).

This perplexity stems from the physical reality that there will always be a component of our persona within the virtual that cannot be separated, and hence the body cannot be used to differentiate between the virtual and the real.

Not only does the physical form persist within the virtual world as a result of its virtual interaction and emotions, but many of the rules and rights that regulate the real now govern the virtual.

Even if you wish to differentiate between a virtual body, such as an avatar or picture, and a genuine physical body, many of the effects are the same. The virtual rules and rights are increasingly reflecting the actual, further blurring the barriers between the two realms.

4. Virtual World’s Absence of Danger

While the traditional perspective of being able to discern between the real and the virtual by separating the mind and the body has been demonstrated to be erroneous, the concept of risk as a differentiating factor shows great potential.

The reasons for this include that danger can only be really experienced in the physical world without the intermediary virtual realm. Of course, certain dangers, such as financial risk and emotional risk , are feasible in the virtual world since these risks have identical, if slightly muted, implications.

However, the concept of bodily danger or terror is a trait that distinguishes the virtual from the real. Creating a virtual business with actual financial ramifications, for example, may appear to have the same characteristics as a real business, but there are distinctions .

All items may be evaluated, mapped, and made completely safe using the virtual environment before they are sold. Experiments can be carried out without endangering human life or property.

Aside from some of the same financial considerations of design expenses, the idea of risk is removed from the design process in many respects. In the virtual world, identities and attributes may be reused, re-hashed, or fully modified, reducing the chance of catastrophic failure.

However, arguably the most serious danger concern is that fear of physical damage is almost entirely absent in the virtual world. Emotions are still present, and a portion of us physically exists in cyberspace.

However, the hazards of bodily harm or property loss cannot be fully recognized in the virtual environment. In this sense, there are no hazards in the virtual world, although there are in the actual one.

It may also be observed in the rise of online dating and sexual play among people who would never engage in such activities in real life.

There are numerous groups of diverse role-players that act out fantasies that they would not do in real life in the fast-increasing virtual world known as Second Life (Linden Research Inc, 2007). This is not because it is hard for them to accomplish in real life ( though some may be ), but because of the risks involved.

The sentiments kids get from these encounters may be nearly comparable to what they would experience in real-world situations, but the key distinction is a risk.

While this does not influence the feeling in certain interactions, it does in others, such as those involved in pain or dominance fantasies. The risk component is what differentiates the virtual from the actual world.

5.1. What Are the Benefits of Being in The Virtual World?

The benefits of being in a virtual environment are as follows:

Everything is feasible. You may be a unicorn, fly like Superman, or be big and smash everything like the Hulk. There are no physical rules to follow.

You may experiment with extreme sensations without fear of repercussions: you can fly off a tower, die, and resurrect; you can personalize it to make you happy: real life is dull and full of issues. VR can be programmed to make you have a lot of friends, do exciting things all the time, and so on.

Some virtual worlds already exist ( for example, Sansar and High Fidelity ) However, in order to have anything similar to The Matrix.

5.2. What Is the Difference Between the Metaverse and Virtual Reality?

Both the Metaverse and Virtual Reality are tremendous technical advances, but Virtual Reality has technological limitations because it is exclusively about experiencing a virtual place and can only go so far.

It has no boundaries since it mixes many types of technology such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and others, all of which are combined into a full-fledged virtual environment in which your own digital avatar may wander and construct. A VR headset may be useful in many ways, but it is not required in this situation.

Virtual reality is typically limited to a fixed number of digital avatars, such as the number of players allowed by a gaming platform; however, the metaverse is an open virtual environment where anyone can travel, enjoy, and communicate with others in a shared virtual spaces across the entire internet; no boundaries are associated.

5.3. Will Virtual Reality Someday Replace Real Life?

It’s possible that our world is already virtual. If technological advancement continues at its current rate, we will soon be able to create virtual worlds that are indistinguishable from physical reality. Even if it takes 10,000 years, it is little in comparison to how long we have already been here.

If you examine the exponential tendency of technical growth seen throughout contemporary human history, it may happen considerably faster. If constructing virtual worlds is a natural, unavoidable component of human evolution , then we may already be on that route.

Instead of believing that this is the basic reality and that we are the first generation to go on to the next phase, it is more logical to suppose that our forefathers have already done so and that we are all simply copies living in a deterministic simulation.

6. Conclusion

While we currently live in a world where the actual and the virtual appear to be separate in most circumstances, this may be less true than we assume. The actual and virtual worlds of knowledge have grown indistinguishable, and new technologies have made the virtual world even more vast and believable.

Because of this development, it is now hard to distinguish our true physical identity from our virtual representation of ourselves in the virtual world.

However, one component that still distinguishes the virtual from the real is the idea of danger , which has yet to be completely realized inside the virtual world.

However, if virtual technology advances to the point where physical feelings can be completely experienced in the virtual world, then the actual risk to the body and other valuable goods will be feasible. If danger can be entirely duplicated in the virtual world, the two worlds appear to be nearly identical.

-Steffy Michael|16/6/22

Last Updated on September 13, 2023 by Saket Kumar

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Virtual Worlds for Learning

• First Online: 14 May 2017

Cite this chapter

• Maggi Savin-Baden 4 ,
• Liz Falconer 5 ,
• Katherine Wimpenny 6 &
• Michael Callaghan 7  

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This chapter examines four papers that have been influential in the use of virtual worlds for learning, but also draws on a range of other research and literature in order to locate virtual world learning across the landscape of higher education. Whilst there is sometimes a misconception that research into learning in virtual worlds is very new, the field began to develop in the late 1990s and has continued since then. Typical examples of the first iterations of virtual worlds include Second Life, Active Worlds, and Kaneva, which have been available for up to 20 years. The second generation is currently being developed, examples being High Fidelity and Project Sansar. The chapter reviews the literature in this field and suggests central themes that emerge are: Socialisation; Presence and immersion in virtual world learning; Learning collaboratively and Trajectories of participation.

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Savin-Baden, M., Falconer, L., Wimpenny, K., Callaghan, M. (2017). Virtual Worlds for Learning. In: Duval, E., Sharples, M., Sutherland, R. (eds) Technology Enhanced Learning. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02600-8_9

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Virtual World: Second Life Essay

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This virtual environment was based on the idea of Philip Rosedale which he unveiled to the world in 2003 through his company called Linden Lab (Mahar & Mahar, 2009). Despite numerous improvements in navigation, display, and popularity the program is still very much in its developmental phase. It has been argued that it is likely that the opportunity presented through this concept is likely to grow just as the internet and outgrow initial misconceptions.

In this concept, the use of a 3D simulator allows subscribers a platform that enables real-time interaction within the virtual environment. The virtual environment can be used to market real-world products, market virtual products, and participate as a developer or owner (Mahar & Mahar, 2009). The user can make use of the search tool incorporated in the software to locate various locations, institutions, cities, churches, etc. After identifying an appropriate location the user can enjoy the facilities just as if they were actually at the physical location (Mahar & Mahar, 2009). From the onset, it is clear to see that this virtual environment allows the owners to provide a much greater variety than a ‘real world’ physical experience.

To create a second life one is required to register with Linden Lab and provide their real name, create a log-in name and a password to access their account, and accept the company terms of service (Mahar & Mahar, 2009). Registration is free but billing information is required to allow for payment for any purchases made within the virtual environment (Hodge, Collins & Giordano, 2011). If the user is interested in the virtual environment for business purposes the orientation island is the destination of choice. Here they receive various tips and information on how to go about their business. Additional help is available via chat from experienced users and new users should consider building such contacts.

Though most newcomers join the second life via Linden Lab’s orientation island several other portals have been developed by collaborators such as NMC Virtual worlds, Big Pond, the NBA, the L Word, and CBS’s CSI: NY among others (Mahar & Mahar, 2009). There are other examples of virtual environments existing such as project wonderland, active worlds (Hodge, Collins & Giordano, 2011). These entry points are the most popular means of doing business in the second life environment.

It allows the business to set up shop and allow the customer much more in service than is normally available (Mahar & Mahar, 2009). For example, a motorcycle dealer can allow customers to build their virtual motorbike from available parts. The more exciting the venue the more business it is likely to create thus suggesting the business should enlist the services of a qualified 3D graphics technician.

The virtual environments reported having over 17 million avatars registered by 2007 (Hodge, Collins & Giordano, 2011). This suggests that these environments are gaining popularity. Among the major reasons, people visit these environments is to use facilities such as virtual conference facilities. One disadvantage of this use is the need to have several users that are conversant with computers and the software. These individuals can be useful in controlling traffic and acting as guides on the conference site (Hodge, Collins & Giordano, 2011). Other groups that have begun to use these environments increasingly include medical trainers, interior designers, hotels, though this should not be taken to suggest second life is only suited to these categories.

Hodge, E., Collins, S., & Giordano, T. (2011). The Virtual Worlds Handbook: How to use second life and other 3D virtual environments . Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, LLC.

Mahar, S. M., & Mahar, J. (2009). The unofficial guide to building your business in the second life virtual world . New York: Amacom Books.

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Essay on Virtual Reality

Students are often asked to write an essay on Virtual Reality in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Virtual Reality

Introduction to virtual reality.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology that transports us to a simulated world. It uses a headset to provide a 3D, computer-generated environment.

VR in Entertainment

VR is popular in entertainment. It is used in games and movies to give a realistic and immersive experience.

VR in Education

In education, VR is used to create interactive lessons. It helps students understand complex concepts easily.

VR in Training

VR is also used in training, like pilot training or medical simulations. It provides a risk-free learning environment.

250 Words Essay on Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) is a simulated experience that can be similar or completely different from the real world. It is a technology that creates an immersive, three-dimensional environment, providing a sense of presence and the ability to interact with the environment.

The Science Behind VR

Virtual Reality operates on the premise of creating a sensory experience for the user. It achieves this through stereoscopic display, parallax, and tracking movements. The display is split between the eyes, creating a 3D perspective. Parallax provides depth cues, and tracking movements adjust the user’s view in real-time.

Applications of VR

The potential applications of VR are vast and varied. In gaming, VR creates immersive experiences that transport players into the game’s world. In medicine, VR is used for therapeutic purposes and surgical training. In education, it provides an interactive learning environment, enabling students to understand complex concepts more easily.

The Future of VR

The future of VR is promising. With advancements in technology, the line between the virtual and real world will blur. It could lead to a new era of communication, with VR meetings and conferences becoming commonplace. Furthermore, the integration of artificial intelligence with VR could result in even more immersive and personalized experiences.

Virtual Reality is a groundbreaking technology that has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of our lives. As the technology continues to evolve, the possibilities are limitless. It is an exciting field that holds immense promise for the future.

500 Words Essay on Virtual Reality

The mechanics of virtual reality.

VR operates by stimulating our senses in such a way that we are deceived into believing that we are in a different setting. This is achieved through a VR headset that provides a stereoscopic display, creating a 3D world by presenting slightly different images to each eye. Additionally, head-tracking sensors monitor the user’s movements and adjust the images accordingly, maintaining the illusion of reality.

Applications of Virtual Reality

The applications of VR are vast and extend beyond entertainment and gaming. In the medical field, VR is used for therapy and rehabilitation, surgical training, and to visualize complex medical data. In education, VR provides immersive learning experiences, making abstract concepts tangible. In the realm of architecture, VR allows for the exploration of virtual building designs before their physical construction.

The Impact of Virtual Reality on Society

VR has the potential to profoundly impact society. It alters the way we interact with digital media, transforming it from a passive experience to an active, immersive one. However, it also raises ethical considerations. As VR becomes more immersive, the line between virtual and physical reality could blur, leading to potential issues around cyber addiction and the devaluation of real-world experiences.

The Future of Virtual Reality

The future of VR is promising, with advancements in technology continually pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Future VR systems may include additional sensory feedback, like touch or smell, to further enhance the immersive experience. Also, the integration of AI with VR could lead to more personalized and adaptive virtual experiences.

In conclusion, VR is a powerful technology with the potential to revolutionize many sectors. Its immersive nature offers unique opportunities for learning, exploration, and experiences. However, as with any technology, it comes with its own set of challenges and ethical considerations. As we continue to develop and integrate VR into our lives, it is crucial to navigate these issues responsibly to harness its benefits fully.

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The Dynamic Cast of “Ready Player One”: Bringing Virtual Reality to Life

This essay is about the cast of “Ready Player One” and their contributions to bringing the film to life. It highlights Tye Sheridan as Wade Watts Olivia Cooke as Art3mis Ben Mendelsohn as the antagonist Nolan Sorrento and Mark Rylance as James Halliday. It also discusses Lena Waithe’s role as Aech Simon Pegg as Ogden Morrow and other supporting cast members. The essay emphasizes how the actors’ performances enhance the film’s narrative blending live-action and CGI to create a compelling and emotionally engaging story. The cast’s portrayals are crucial in translating Ernest Cline’s novel into a visually stunning and resonant film.

How it works

“Ready Player One” directed by Steven Spielberg is a cinematic adaptation of Ernest Cline’s beloved science fiction novel. The film set in a dystopian future where people escape their grim realities by immersing themselves in a vast virtual world called the OASIS features a talented and diverse cast. This ensemble plays a crucial role in bringing the vivid imaginative world of the OASIS to life blending the boundaries between reality and virtual reality seamlessly.

Tye Sheridan stars as the protagonist Wade Watts also known by his avatar Parzival in the OASIS.

Sheridan’s portrayal of Wade captures the character’s evolution from a socially awkward teenager to a confident leader. His ability to convey vulnerability and determination resonates with audiences making Wade’s journey both relatable and inspiring. Sheridan’s performance anchors the film providing a strong emotional core around which the elaborate virtual escapades revolve.

Opposite Sheridan Olivia Cooke plays Samantha Cook known as Art3mis in the OASIS. Cooke brings a compelling mix of toughness and sensitivity to her role. Art3mis is a skilled and fearless gamer but Cooke ensures that her character’s personal stakes and vulnerabilities are never far from the surface. Her chemistry with Sheridan is palpable adding depth to their on-screen partnership and driving the narrative forward with emotional resonance.

Ben Mendelsohn takes on the role of the primary antagonist Nolan Sorrento the CEO of the evil corporation IOI. Mendelsohn’s portrayal of Sorrento is chillingly effective. He embodies corporate greed and ruthlessness creating a villain who is both formidable and believable. Mendelsohn’s performance adds a layer of tension to the film as Sorrento’s relentless pursuit of control over the OASIS represents a constant threat to the protagonists.

Mark Rylance delivers a standout performance as James Halliday the eccentric creator of the OASIS. Rylance infuses Halliday with a quirky reclusive genius that makes the character both endearing and enigmatic. His portrayal captures the essence of a man who despite his immense intellect and creativity struggles with personal connections and regrets. Rylance’s nuanced performance adds a poignant touch to the film highlighting the deeper themes of isolation and legacy.

Lena Waithe playing Helen Harris known in the OASIS as Aech brings charisma and warmth to her role. Aech is Wade’s best friend and a formidable ally in the quest for Halliday’s Easter egg. Waithe’s portrayal of Aech is both humorous and heartfelt providing much-needed levity and camaraderie amidst the high-stakes adventure. Her dynamic performance ensures that Aech stands out as a memorable and beloved character.

The supporting cast including actors like Philip Zhao as Sho and Win Morisaki as Daito further enrich the film with their vibrant portrayals. Each character contributes to the diverse tapestry of the OASIS adding unique skills and perspectives to the quest. Their interactions and collective efforts underscore the film’s themes of friendship teamwork and the importance of diversity.

Simon Pegg plays Ogden Morrow Halliday’s former business partner and co-creator of the OASIS. Pegg’s performance is marked by a subtle blend of humor and gravitas. As Morrow he serves as a bridge between the past and present providing critical insights into Halliday’s intentions and the true purpose of the Easter egg hunt. Pegg’s character adds depth to the narrative highlighting the themes of redemption and the enduring impact of creative vision.

Spielberg’s direction combined with the cast’s stellar performances transforms “Ready Player One” into a visually stunning and emotionally engaging film. The actors’ ability to bring their characters to life both in the real world and within the OASIS is instrumental in making the audience invest in the story. The seamless integration of live-action and CGI bolstered by the cast’s convincing portrayals allows the film to navigate between the two worlds effortlessly.

In conclusion the cast of “Ready Player One” plays a pivotal role in translating Ernest Cline’s novel to the big screen. Their performances capture the essence of their characters driving the narrative and enhancing the film’s exploration of virtual reality identity and human connection. Through their portrayals the cast ensures that “Ready Player One” is not just a visual spectacle but also a compelling and emotionally resonant story. The film stands as a testament to the power of skilled actors in bringing complex multi-layered worlds to life resonating with audiences and critics alike.

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Old – Essay Virtual Worlds

Essay competition, virtual worlds, competition timeline.

The development of intelligent life in our universe has taken billions of years. In order to achieve human-level AI, Lab42 explores creating virtual worlds where AI can evolve much faster. Hereby, we shall not try to replicate the real world, but to create modifiable virtual environments and pose the question:

Which properties and structures must a virtual world have to enable the successful creation of human-level artificial intelligence?

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Please make sure to carefully read the competition requirements on page 2 of the Challenge Outline before submitting your essay. Essays may be submitted in English or German, and all citations and sources must be properly indicated. 

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            ISSUE: "Should We Live in the Real World or a Virtual One?-.              The article is all about the thin line that now lies in between the real world and the virtual one. As the title of the article speaks for itself, it is letting the reader choose between the two - living in real world or the virtual one. The technology, nowadays, is becoming more and more sophisticated and powerful, making it a big part of our daily lives, gulping down the traditional way of living that we got used to. The fact that in this present time, our world is already generated by high fuss of modern breakthroughs is something we cannot withstand. We are already starting to live in a virtual world somehow. With this, the issue tingles, as to whether we are ready for this big event "the virtual world.              Basically, what is a virtual world? The word virtual began to denote created by computer networks, related to computers, the Internet'. A long line of new words has been coined to define new things and phenomena of the virtual world just to oppose the real reality (virtual environment, virtual game, virtual workspace, virtual office, virtual parent, virtual doctor ,virtual cash, etc.).'Cyber', 'virtual', 'digital', 'online' are opposed to real', 'physical', 'bricks-and-mortar', 'flesh-and-blood'. The real world finds its projection in the virtual world. Communication requirements and existing communication technologies (phone, fax, printmedia, TV, radio) find their counterpart in the virtual world of the Internet. In contrast to existing communication technologies in the real world people can create their individual living space in the virtual reality - the medium has become habitable. Some people doubt whether there is a distinction between the virtual and real world. (USA Today - Sept.30, 2001.).              Technology is binding the world of work and the world of home in ways that redefine what is means to be in each. Some changes are dramatic, others are subtle, but the changes are experienced in the mundane activities of everyday life.

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Essays Related to Virtual world

1. dark world of virtual reality.

Main goal of Virtual Reality is to produce a simulation so realistic and appealing that a person would have trouble differentiating between real world and virtual world. Primary strength of virtual reality is that virtual world can not only imitate real world, but also it can make virtual world more appealing. This can cause a normal person to prefer virtual world to real world; eventually, a person will deny the genuineness of real world. ... Virtual world will become a tempting substitute of real world. ... A crime committed in virtual world can go unpunished since there are no rules or laws...

• Word Count: 618
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2. Virtual Reality

As technical definition of Virtual Reality, virtual realities are computer-generated worlds, which can be explored in real time. A virtual world is not like a CD or film, which plays a set pre-recorded experience. ... The computer will respond to whatever you do inside the world. ... Virtual reality models allow the user to interact with the world. ... Virtual reality is becoming widely accepted in the western world as a high technology visualized tool. ...

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3. Virtual Reality

What is Virtual Reality? Virtual reality is the computer generated simulation of a real or imagined environment or world that is graphics based or text based. ... Virtual Reality existed long before it was classified as "virtual reality" in the way that the public now perceives it. ... The virtual reality that generally comes to mind is the 3-D imaging one runs into in a flight simulator or walking inside a virtual house. ... The medical applications of virtual reality are being used world-wide from medical schools, such as East Carolina University, to many large centers that spe...

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4. Virtual Reality

Perhaps, this is mainly because of all the possibilities which virtual reality creates. ... The idea of a man and woman being in a virtual world and a man fondling the womans breasts was probably, although very much possible, not a great first impression. ... That is one of the drawbacks of virtual reality. ... This brings up another key controversy as to who should be in control of limiting this virtual world. ... Perhaps in the coming years, new technology will come out and people will learn more about this virtual world. ...

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5. Virtual Reality

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6. Virtual Reality Technology

They spend increasing amounts of time in the virtual environment, which has a detrimental effect on their real world life" (Virtual Reality, 2009). Another issue that occurs due to the cyber-addiction is the question of how violence in a virtual reality can affect a person in their real world. Virtual Reality asks a question along the lines of, can a person experience an injury or some type of emotional distress as a direct result of an act of violence occurring in a virtual world (Virtual Reality, 2009). ... This would result in possible crime and violence, which if the user had not prev...

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To be in a world of their imagination and escape reality for a while is probably a dream of many and we might be a lot closer then we think. ... This was the first attempt at Virtual reality type device. ... With virtual reality, someone who is afraid of heights can face his or her fears gradually by using virtual reality simulators to experience them without actual danger. ... This technology will allow people to connect in the virtual world and be in the same room or a different planet altogether interacting in a social environment. ... With a virtual reality that may be something easily a...

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8. Analysis Of Rise Of The Virtual State

"Critical Analysis of The Rise of the Virtual State- The central idea in of Richard Rosecrance's book entitled, The Rise of the Virtual State, is that power is shifting once again, this time to nations whose people are most adept at summoning global financial capital and turning it into conceptual insights for sale around the world. ... In Rosecrance's view "China may become the production plant for the world, but China's industries would only attain completeness when mated to research, development, product design, marketing, and financing provided by other nations."" (171) Th...

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9. The Rise of the Virtual State

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Defendants Acquitted in Panama Papers Money-Laundering Trial

The case focused on the law firm at the heart of the 2016 scandal, in which leaked documents revealed a vast network of offshore tax havens.

By Leila Miller

Reporting from Mexico City

In a striking verdict for a money-laundering case associated with the Panama Papers scandal, a Panamanian judge on Friday acquitted all 28 defendants, among them former employees of the law firm Mossack Fonseca, the source of the leaked documents that set off a worldwide furor in 2016.

The verdict came eight years after a partnership of media outlets published an explosive investigation into 11.5 million documents leaked from the Panama-based firm. The leak exposed the offshore banking industry, prompted international tax investigations and brought down heads of state.

Among the original 29 defendants were the shuttered firm’s co-founders, Jürgen Mossack, 76, and Ramón Fonseca, who died in May at age 71 while awaiting the verdict. In her 339-page ruling, the judge, Baloísa Marquínez, said that the case against Mr. Fonseca was dropped because of his death.

Prosecutors had alleged that Mossack Fonseca had created shell companies with the purpose of hiding money earned in illicit activities, and that the firm failed to act with due diligence and take the necessary care when reviewing its clients.

In a written statement published Friday evening, Panama’s judicial branch said that the judge had found that electronic evidence presented by prosecutors did not meet chain of custody protocols and had suffered from authentication issues. It also said that the judge had not found sufficient evidence to hold the accused responsible.

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Opinion: As conservatives target same-sex marriage, its power is only getting clearer

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It’s been two years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Dobbs case that overturned the federal right to an abortion, and the troubling concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas in which he expressed a desire to “revisit” other landmark precedents, including the freedom to marry for same-sex couples, codified nationally by the Obergefell Supreme Court decision, nine years ago Wednesday

Since that ruling, the LGBTQ+ and allied community has done much to protect the fundamental freedom to marry — passing the Respect for Marriage Act in Congress in 2022; sharing their stories this year to mark the 20th anniversary of the first state legalization of same-sex marriages, in Massachusetts; and in California , Hawaii and Colorado launching ballot campaigns to repeal dormant but still-on-the-books anti-marriage constitutional amendments.

California Democratic Party endorses ballot measures on same-sex marriage, taxes, rent control

The party’s executive board voted Sunday on which measures they would endorse.

May 19, 2024

This winter, I worked with a team at the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law to survey nearly 500 married LGBTQ+ people about their relationships. Respondents included couples from every state in the country; on average they had been together for more than 16 years and married for more than nine years. Sixty-two percent married after the court’s 2015 Obergefell marriage decision, although their relationships started before before that. More than 30% of the couples had children and another 25% wanted children in the future.

One finding that jumped out of the data: Almost 80% of married same-sex couples surveyed said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the Obergefell decision being overturned. Around a quarter of them said they’d taken action to shore up their family’s legal protections — pursuing a second-parent adoption, having children earlier than originally planned or marrying on a faster-than-expected timeline — because of concerns about marriage equality being challenged. One respondent said, “We got engaged the day that the Supreme Court ruled on the Dobbs decision and got married one week after.”

World & Nation

Same-sex marriage ruling creates new constitutional liberty

The Supreme Court’s historic ruling Friday granting gays and lesbians an equal right to marry nationwide puts an exclamation point on a profound shift in law and public attitudes, and creates the most significant and controversial new constitutional liberty in more than a generation.

June 26, 2015

As we examined the survey results, it became clearer than ever why LGBTQ+ families and same-sex couples are fighting so hard to protect marriage access — and the answer is really quite simple: The freedom to marry has been transformative for them. It has not only granted them hundreds of additional rights and responsibilities, but it has also strengthened their bonds in very real ways.

Nearly every person surveyed (93%) said they married for love; three-quarters added that they married for companionship or legal protections. When asked how marriage changed their lives, 83% reported positive changes in their sense of safety and security, and 75% reported positive changes in terms of life satisfaction. “I feel secure in our relationship in a way I never thought would be possible,” one participant told us. “I love being married.”

The evolution of same-sex marriage

I’ve been studying LGBTQ+ people and families for my entire career — and even still, many of the findings of the survey touched and inspired me.

Individual respondents talked about the ways that marriage expanded their personal family networks, granting them (for better and worse!) an additional set of parents, siblings and loved ones. More than 40% relied on each other’s families of origin in times of financial or healthcare crisis, or to help out with childcare. Some told of in-laws who provided financial assistance to buy a house, or cared for them while they were undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.

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And then there was the effect on children. Many respondents explained that their marriage has provided security for their children, and dignity and respect for the family unit. Marriage enabled parents to share child-rearing responsibilities — to take turns being the primary earner (and carrying the health insurance), and spending more time at home with the kids.

The big takeaway from this study is that same-sex couples have a lot on the line when it comes to the freedom to marry — and they’re going to do everything possible to ensure that future political shifts don’t interfere with their lives. As couples across the country continue to speak out, share their stories — and in California, head to the ballot box in November to protect their hard-earned freedoms — it’s clear to me that it’s because they believe wholeheartedly, and with good reason, that their lives depend on it.

Abbie E. Goldberg is an affiliated scholar at the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law and a psychology professor at Clark University, where she directs the women’s and gender studies.

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