[-empyre-] definition of virtual

[John Hopkins]

Hi Roger --

> i must admit i find the emphasis on 'attenuation of energy flows"
> problematically restrictive- so many of the technologies of virtual
> presence involved
> amplification of energies that do not reach the body ( telephone) or

..snip...

> embodiment is being able to be present in spaces that are present but
> that the
> body is unable to perceive without amplification or translation devices

Very interesting that you bring this up as the title of my full thesis is "The 
Regime of Amplification" and part of it is very much about the alteration (by 
the technosocial system and other systems) of energy flows that are 'out there'. 
Amplification is a very powerful model to describe our 'technological' 
interactions with the world, attenuation/concentration being a subsets of that 
denoting a negative/positive gain on a particular flow. (Speaking practically, 
say, putting on a hat in the hot sun, you attenuate the effects of the sun, and 
if a wool hat, you concentrate the effects of retention of heat from the head.) 
Energy conversion is a crucial process that, aside from increasing the entropy 
of a system, provides all life with a means to survive. It is precisely the 
(technological) instrumentation that you speak of -- in its taking of some kind 
of originary energy flow and converting (amplifying, attenuating) it to one that 
our embodied energy receptor systems can receive 'sensibly' -- that I propose is 
the causative essence of virtuality.

Widen the scope of this concept, and the body (all life in general) is also 
heavily involved in this at a cellular level -- converting energy sources, 
attenuating some, amplifying others -- in the service of successful continuance 
into the future. (This model can be taken to what may appear as an extreme, 
depending on what world view you use to interact with your full reality, but it 
could include the concept of hypostasis -- that is, spirit (energy) coming into 
'inert' matter causing it to come to life. Essentially life itself, is an 
autocatalytic process that takes 'ambient' energy sources and concentrates those 
for consequent expression. For me virtuality is therefor a question of degree 
rather than of the tired real/virtual dichotomy. And this degree relates to 
atomic, molecular, cellular, organismic, social, and cosmic processes (another 
words, scale independent). In the end, it's just a model, though, and the model 
is never the thing itself.

I hope this addressed your points. It's a bit difficult as what I sent was 
extracted from a document proposing a more holistic and very wide-ranging model, 
so the brief passage on glass included a number of concepts that are more fully 
addressed elsewhere.

Cheers,
John

-- 
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Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
taking on sustainable home-ownership shortly
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
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