"Just like art, technology is not merely a tool but a force capable of shaping and giving substance to reality. Virtuality is not just an alternative space but a world constructed and transformed through our interactions with it. It offers us the chance to escape reality and immerse ourselves in an unlimited dimension, to explore new forms of creation and connection with the world. It can be a means of resistance, as well as an opening—a doorway to transcend the limits of time and space. In this sense, our relationship with technology is not purely instrumental; it carries an ethical and political dimension."
We found it a bit suspicious. That was one of the first responses we got when they finally deigned to engage with the topic. We had asked for help with the text (in return, we were asked that we not reveal their identity). At first, we were not taken very seriously. We got vague and generic suggestions, a few well-sounding phrases, but nothing out of the ordinary.
We wanted them to reflect on the encroachment of the virtual world upon the natural one, and we hurried to explain how we saw the latter’s appearances as inadvertent disruptions, like the sprouts breaking through the cracks in asphalt.
They laughed.
We ventured the possibility that within the unhierarchical fabric of nature, even in the interactions of its most insignificant entities, we might find answers to the conflicts posed by our advancement over it.
They tried to change the subject.
We pressed on, rambling about the things of the world—how they no longer touch, or can’t be fully touched. Or how, when touched, whatever they might be, it feels like touching an entirely smooth surface, like a finger against a mirror that no longer even rests on its own reflection.
They seemed uncomfortable.
We went further. We proposed imagining a natural world retreating into its intermittence, glimpsed only when we distractedly avert our gaze, as the sole alternative to a reality surrendered to preordained algorithmic logic.
They fell silent.
We questioned the value of a world reduced to inhabiting solely the proscenium of our retinas, fragile as a cardboard stage under the rain.
Nothing.
We also wanted to talk about time—or better, to have them tell us about time. About the time of virtuality, or what virtuality does to time itself. Nearly tripping over ourselves, we said that, to our understanding, in exchange for the promise of infinity offered to us at every instant, we are also stabbed in the back, ever so slowly, by the dagger of accelerated, multiple, immediate, unbearable time.
The silence stretched on for a few more seconds.
They left the chat.
