THE REAL VS. VIRTUAL – COMPUTER SIMULATION THE SECOND LIFE
Abstract
Reality and fantasy build a special kind of constructed reality that implies a mixture of reality, media and virtual culture. The traditionally perceived notion of reality has been transformed into a technically reproduced reality and an aesthetic illusion of media reality. Virtual realityappeared in the postmodern age of the media as a kind of equivalent to the real, material world. The new net generation, twenty-four hours available on the Web, uses completely new forms of Internet communication to send and receive numerous information shaped into different types of messages. The issue of ‘objectivity’ and ‘truthfulness’ of media content / images is still perceived by media users of the new age as immediate and trusted information. Given that living a 'second life' means becoming a part of a narrative from the world of virtual cyberspace that has little in common with reality, the aim of this analysis is to equate the world of virtual with fiction as a concept of imagination from the world of ideas and place it against empirically verifiable material reality. Using the descriptive-explicative method and the method of theoretical analysis and comparation, the paper will present an example of a computer simulation the Second Life in the context of perceiving the blurring of boundaries between the real, the virtual, truth and fiction. It is concluded that the daily multi-hour use of modern technologies often blurs the boundaries of these worlds, which causes anxiety, alienation of people, doubts about the formation of identity, to the implosion of subjects into the masses. By summarizing traditional culture with cultural contents in the Second Life, individuals immersing themselves in the virtual world build their own hypernarative with new values and ways of communication. When real and virtual life become a media spectacle, when unfulfilled desires from the real world begin to come true in the Second Life, the players' departure into the virtual world of fun and adventure grows into a daily preoccupation.
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