Virtual World:

A Substitutive New Wonderland or a Revised Reality?

 

Along with the drastic advancement of Information Technology, virtual reality is becoming more and more plausible and implementable, garnering interest from all over the society. A dream of fleeing from the stressful and limitative reality into a new world full of new opportunities has always been prominent throughout the course of history. It traces back as far as fairytales like Cinderella, of which people fantasized the rise of social status followed by prince charming. They were rather a distant, one-way fictional form of media that people only appreciated and imagined themselves in. However, the development of IT has now introduced interactive ways for media consumers to actually put themselves in that shoes, with what is so-called “Virtual Reality.” 

 

As a student of film myself, one of the basic elements of making a narrative is ‘plausibility.’ Unless it is a documentary film that simply depicts the reality the way it is (though it can be carried out in a fashion intended by the director), films with fictional narratives created by the writers require imaginary stories and incidents. These narratives should be ‘plausible’ in order for the viewers to immerse into the imaginary world the writer and director created. For example, a young girl running into her crush in the middle of the street is an event that could happen in the real world. However, a young girl suddenly getting sent to space, accompanying a space monkey and fighting for the sake of the galaxy seems rather more unrealistic. Since this story is too unworldly, If there were no ‘plausible’ supporting details to fill in its loopholes, it would only draw questioning reactions by the audience which would never be answered. With some additional settings like the galaxy in grave danger by the evil aliens and the girl being the chosen one to stop them, with the space monkey as the mentor to guide the hidden powers that underlies within the chosen one, it would then make a ‘plausible’ scenario for a science fiction film. 

 

This rule of ‘plausibility’ would also apply to terms like ‘Design Fiction’ and ‘virtual environment.’ Two readings, ‘30 Days in ActiveWorlds (Hudson Smith, A. (2002))’ and ‘ ‘Design Fiction as World Building (Paul, C., Joseph, L., Miriam, S., & Mike, S. (2017))’ reinforces this idea.  

 

According to ’30 Days in ActiveWorlds,’ the author Hudson-Smith designed an experiment as he would set up a server in a game called “ActiveWorlds” in which the users could do basically whatever they wished to. Even though it was a virtual society where people could freely do whatever the could, events resembling that of real world occurred like terrorism, realistic construction of various buildings and structures (although it did not serve any practical functions within the game), religious structure and gathering, relationship building and idolization of the creator. Even in the fictional world where users could perform impossible actions were it for the real world, people’s actions were based on those of real life. The reason why people acted this way remains unanswered within the reading, but I believe it is the ‘plausibility’ that motivated people. The author shares his feeling of ‘being home’ within this virtual reality, which I believe would have been a shared experience among other players as well. And for people to ‘feel home’ inside the virtual world, it would have been necessary for the world to resemble that of what they already knew and was accustomed to. 

 

‘Design Fiction’ by Paul C., describes a variety of interpretation of the concept ‘design fiction’ and his two design fiction projects as an example. In his example of ‘Game of Drones’ and the ‘Empathy Engine,’ it becomes clear how ‘plausible details’ made the fictitiously designed world believable. Certain new, creative ideas that are based on and derived from originally existing traits of the real world depicted how they could be developed and implemented into the existing world of hours into the realm created with the ‘design fiction.’ Reflecting on the existing technology and limits of drones, the author designed docking stations for charging located in different places throughout the existing city of Lancaster, UK. He also thought of ‘empathy engine’ due to the face that text communication was getting more frequently used and how people lacked the ability to figure out the counterpart’s emotions without a face-to-face communication. He actually made ‘plausible prototypes’ of the machine using 3D printer, ‘plausibly’ as a peripheral device for smartphones rather than a standalone device.  

 

According to the insights made above, it is evident that worlds created through ‘design fiction’ would be nothing like ‘A Whole New World’ or ‘the world unlike the one as we know it.’ It rather would be based on and derive from the existing world of ours with certain creative inventions that changes the natural lifestyle within the fictitious world. Thus, it is ‘plausible’ to think that designing ‘plausible,’ yet creative inventions is crucial to ‘Design Fiction’