Can you feel the virtual flow??

Laila Sakr explores different definitions of embodiment, virtuality and how both come in contact with reality and actuality. One of the interesting topics she covers in her essay is how something virtual becomes real even though in its entirety is not actually real.

Techology nowadays has advanced so much that we are able to create different worlds without the need of them of being real, and that is what we call the world of VIRTUALITY!

As she mentions a lot of people claim that something is not real if cannot be felt, but one of the things that I find interesting as she mentions is that the reality in virtuality its not that it cannot be "physically" felt but in fact can be "emotionally" felt.

It is curious how far we can go with technology, not only from developing machines that make people lazier from day-to-day but also we can create events that might not be 'actual', but the fact that they are taking place in a type of environment or world (which is virtual) make them real!

While I was reading the article, what first came to mind were video games! I believe they are the best example for this topic because everything that happens in video games is not 'actual'! Of course because there is no way that an assassin in the renaissance period met Leonardo DaVinci and overthrew the Borgia family, or dragons do not exist, nor magic elements nor anything fictional that video games contain.

But it is true for those hours that you play the game, the character's story, the game's environment and everything is real to you! IT EXISTS, even though you are not able to touch it!

Those emotions either of anger or happiness makes them part of our reality. The images that are formed inside of them, similar to the images that are made inside our minds, just as Sakr's says, which in fact we associate with the people or things around us.

I think virtuality in fact opens up barriers that reality itself is not able to. In a virtual world, anything and everything is possible, even though it might not be 'actual' its entire concept makes it real. And even though we are not able to physically feel something virtual, its image and what we FEEL from it makes it part of our reality.