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Virtual Reality and Metastable Interactivity

Neb Kujundzic

What is interactivity? Anyone interested in computer technology, and especially in educational aspects of computer technology, will find the word "interactivity" mentioned with very high frequency. Yet most definitions of the terms "interaction" and "interactivity" are not very precise. Here is one typical example: "Whether we're dealing with people or objects, interaction is essential. We perform some action, and when we observe how the person or object reacts we modify our behavior accordingly" (Cheshire 1996).

According to this definition, every living creature is capable of some sort of interaction. Notice that the "objects" or "persons" of our interaction can range from very static (we can interact with a large stone by walking around it) to very dynamic (imagine trying to interact with a person uttering an ambiguous expression). As well, notice that the nature of the objects of our interaction does not necessarily determine the range and dynamics of our own interacting. For example, the Australian aboriginals interact with their sacred boulders in a very deep and complex way while we can imagine an almost total absence of interacting with certain people, including those from our own culture.

In terms of computer technology, interactivity is of the utmost importance. For example, one can think about the Turing test of intelligence as an exercise in discursive, one-on-one interactivity. Virtual reality, in contrast, prides itself on being a computer-generated environment that can simulate the entire interactive experience, including its visual, audio, and tactile dimensions. The possibility of creating an artificial, yet convincing, world capable of interacting with real people typically arouses ancient fears, fears made worse by Plato's and Descartes' familiar metaphysical arguments.

David Frost, in his recent interview with Bill Gates, sums up these ancient fears:

SIR DAVID: And I think the fear I'm sure you find among a lot of people is that sort of very rather inchoate fear of the fact that somehow life is going to all be lived through the computer and
not in the old real way. And you said on one occasion, "Virtual will never replace real in the things that are important to us." I mean, that's at the root of the reassurance that people want, I think, isn't it?

MR. GATES: Well, the most virtual thing that people do is reading. You know, you read about mountain climbing. More people have read about climbing Mount Everest than have climbed Mount Everest. Now, is that a bad thing? You know, it's not actually going and doing it. I think giving the people a choice of what real things do they want to do, what things would they prefer just to learn through reading, it gives them flexibility. It's a form of freedom (Bill Gates talking with David Frost, 1995, p. 11]

Gates argues that the new media won't make the average person withdraw from the world and from other people since reading is essentially the same activity, and reading does not make people withdraw from the world and from other people.

In my opinion, this is an extremely mistaken strategy of defending VR since the greatest danger of VR lies precisely in the fact that it resembles reading. In other words, the limiting nature of VR's current interactivity partly stems from its legacy in reading. [I think of McLuhan's observation that every new medium begins as an imitation of the medium that precedes it.] VR, at least at the moment, seems to be continuing and further radicalizing a particular kind of interactivity, that Michael Heim, in his Virtual Realism, calls tunnel interactivity. Yet VR seems capable of enabling its users to enter a future era of interactivity that might be called, because of its open-ended and dynamic nature, "metastable interactivity." By metastable interactivity I mean a new generation of interactivity that switches seamlessly between tunnel and spiral interactivity. This capability, I will argue, is VR's greatest promise. Before I proceed, let me clarify the meaning of "tunnel" and "spiral" interactivity.

Currently, there are two general technological means of achieving VR interactivity: head-mounted displays (HMD) and projection room systems (CAVE). The difference between the two approaches boils down to the proximity of VR displays to our sense receptors. If the displays are very close to our eyes and ears, as it happens when we put on the head-mounted display, then we get immersed in the virtual world by means of computer simulations and we get shut off from the real world. If the displays are more distant from our eyes and ears then we get surrounded by the virtual world and we remain aware of our real world environment.

These two technological approaches to interactivity illustrate two general types of interactivity: tunnel and spiral. I borrow the terminology of tunnel and spiral interactivity from Michael Heim. He associates tunnel interactivity with the suppression of the human body. I see tunnel interactivity as private and atomistic, hostile to intimacy, and blind to community. One may add that tunnel interactivity represents a form of solipsistic retreat into the self. Reading, day dreaming, and solitary masturbating are examples of tunnel interactivity.

Spiral interactivity, on the other hand, implies an act of ecstatic immersion of one's body in the environment and the community. Spiral interaction is a holistic matter, sometimes a fully-fledged ritual usually coupled to a lesser or greater degree with a trance-like experience. This kind of interactivity is marked by a strong awareness of one's own body as well as the bodies of other participants. In Heim's words:

Virtual world design faces the crossroads: the tunnel and the spiral. The tunnel sucks us further into technology as a forward-thrusting, fovea-centered, obsessive fixation. The spiral moves us into virtual worlds that return us to ourselves, repeatedly deepening the awareness we enjoy as primary bodies. Technology can string us out to become peripherals of our machines, or it can add another layer to the ever-deepening return to enriched, enhanced existence (Heim 1998 p. 76).

This is where my understanding of spiral interactivity departs from Heim's. While Heim associates spiral interactivity with ecstatic and trance experiences (he uses the example of the Whirling Dervishes), experiences which appear to be solitary and individual, I wish to emphasize the social nature of spiral interactivity.

First, the vast majority of ecstatic and trance experiences require a community of participants (i.e., rituals, rock concerts, and happenings are social events). Even the Whirling Dervishes need the right kind of costumes, decor, and social ambiance to begin their trance-like performances. I believe we cannot imagine a whirling dervish performing his seemingly solitary dance with a walkman on his ears in the same way as we cannot imagine a Buddhist monk meditating while listening to a walkman. Although both of them appear cut off from everyone else in a "tunnel" like fashion, they are in fact "spiraling out" and seeking a special kind of ecstatic experience. They are seeking to embrace the entire universe thorough the totality of their spiritual and bodily experience. Second, and much more importantly, our sense of our "primary" bodies, their capabilities and boundaries, is mediated, in a very fundamental sense, by culture and community. This point has been made very often by scholars from many disciplines, especially by feminist scholars. Currently, there is an entire sub-discipline in the social sciences that is termed "body theory:"

Body theory is the work of historians, sociologists, philosophers, and other scholars in the past twenty to twenty-five years that explicitly focuses on the body, especially on sexuality and gender. The body is seen as an ideological surface on which history and politics inscribe their truths.... This work is carried on, by and large, in the methodological atmosphere of a constructivist notion of gender, sexuality, social ideas and the self (Mann 1996 p. 753).

Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate the close connection between history/politics and the body is to use a well-known metaphor: the body of a nation. Of course, the 20th century taught us a very important lesson: nations, much like human bodies, are not bona fide entities - they are subject to change; and this change can range from cosmetic touches to radical changes. On the other hand, there is a growing sense of caution when it comes to social constructivism. Some writers warn that the matters of politics, body, sex, and gender have never been that simple:

Lived bodies are not "blank slates" onto which culture writes its codes, nor are they empty shells into which culture pours its significations. As helpful as gender has been to develop feminist theories of women's subordination, we now need to return and complicate sex in an effort to rethink embodiment during an era bent on watching it (virtually) disappear (O'Farrel and Vallone 1999 p. 209).

Following a more balanced version of the social constructivist approach and style of thinking, I assume that our "primary bodies" are at least socially informed, and, to a certain extent, socially impregnated, entities. Therefore, when we become aware of our primary bodies, this awareness also necessitates the awareness of various socially mediated aspects of our existence.

Furthermore, I wish to apply my dichotomy between tunnel and spiral interactivity to the history of Western civilization and especially to the emergence and development of modern technology. My thesis is the following: there has been a gradual shift from spiral to tunnel interactivity since the first great technological discoveries, and, by the end of this century, tunnel interactivity will have become a greatly dominant form of interactivity.

Let me, however, present a few caveats before I proceed. I do not wish to make this gradual shift indicative of some grandiose metaphysical principle nor do I wish to maintain that there is something especially tunnel-like in modern technology. My thesis simply reflects my belief that scientific and technological developments, by their own nature, impose certain limitations and a certain range of possibilities on humanity. One of these limitations and possibilities has to do with the nature of interactivity. Finally, I do not wish to say that tunnel and spiral interactivity are not present, at least potentially, in every technology.
I will use three examples to illustrate this thesis. It goes without saying that many more examples of a similar sort can be drawn from virtually every aspect of modern life.

In the past, narrative used to be highly dependant on spiral interactivity. For example, the great epics, including Homer's epics, were primarily intended as performances. The importance of these performances cannot be underestimated - they constituted the basis of an entire culture:

The Milesians shared with other Greeks the Greek language, a social structure, and a cultural heritage that can loosely be called Homeric, in the sense that they accepted the oral epics which we know as the Iliad and Odyssey as their own tradition and recognized the Olympic gods (McKirahan 1994 p. 3).

The epics were recounted at homes or at various public arenas. The listeners' participation (i.e. physical presence and attention) was a necessary condition of the performance. With the spread of writing, especially with the invention of standardized writing in the wake of Gutenberg, the narrative was no longer a matter of performance, participation and community presence. The act of reading became a silent, solitary act.

Most traditional forms of music have a highly holistic nature. For example, music was originally used by most primitive societies as a background for various forms of tribal dancing. As a matter of fact, most surviving contemporary brands of ethnic music are still hardly imaginable without dancing. I invite you to consider the use of walkman as the ultimate example of how tunnel interactivity can become dominant in music. Walkmans, much like books and computers, stand for solitude. The sound of a walkman is private and purged of its holistic origins.

In addition, there is a possibility offered by technology to use music as an anti-social weapon. For example, cars and home stereos can be turned up so loud as to dominate attention in a comparatively large area, thus encroaching aggressively on other forms of social or private activity.

Finally, consider wars. Aside from their obvious social and political significance - and perhaps their intrinsic moral and aesthetic repugnance as well - wars and battlegrounds can also be seen as a great source of friendship and a test of moral character. The community of soldiers, standing shoulder to shoulder in victory and in loss, epitomized a sense of obligation and responsibility from time immemorial. For example, Socrates' role as a soldier in the community of soldiers is arguably inseparable from his character as a philosopher. Modern wars, especially the wars fought in the last decade of the twentieth century, illustrate the age of technological tunnel interactivity. A pilot flying a bombing mission, in his high-tech and private (almost virtual) space, is extremely distanced from his target. The pilot releases a "smart" bomb, maintaining his sole contact with the enemy exclusively through the solitude of his computer.
The latter example is, of course, not meant to diminish the courage and dedication of those who engage in this kind of warfare. I am speaking solely about interactivity, and not about justice and the legitimacy of modern warfare in the wider political sense.

Heim suggests that future users of VR will be able to move, using a linked series, from tunnel to spiral interactivity over the course of a day. He compares CAVE VR to a decompression chamber and HMD VR to scuba diving:

Scuba divers check time tables to find a ratio between time spent undersea and time in decompression. They then spend the recommended time in the decompression chamber so their deep-sea diving will not cause internal injuries. The VR user should have a corresponding decompression procedure after spending a couple hours in HMD VR. The CAVE VR provides a decompression inasmuch as projected VR smoothens the transition from cyberbody to primary body (Heim 1998 p. 171).

This is another point of my disagreement with Heim. I would like to suggest that the participants in VR should be able, in the not too distant future, to choose between the two types of interactivity that can be applied to the same VR environment. Let me illustrate this with an example from the movie industry.

Most people nowadays have a choice of seeing a movie either at home or in the movie theater. Many choose the latter option partly because going out to see a movie has an air of spiral interactivity. We all know that, out there at the movies, there exists a community of moviegoers, as well as the ritual of lining up for tickets, buying popcorn, etc. In contrast, renting a movie and bringing it back home resembles tunnel more than spiral interactivity.
Although there are attempts by the movie industry at reducing the differences between the two types of interactivity (i.e. the introduction of surround-sound, big screen TVs ), this subtle and elusive sense of actually being there, and watching the movie in the presence of other moviegoers, will never be captured by home entertainment.

To say that we get annoyed by noise in the movie theater and that we, therefore, participate in a form of tunnel interactivity even in the movie theaters amounts to entirely missing my point. The very nature of spiral interactivity requires community participation and it is still a mark of spiral interactivity when the informal rules of that participation get violated.

My suggestion is that people will have their choice of participating in a VR environment in two ways depending on the type of interactivity. There might be some CAVE VR arcades in the future where playing certain kinds of VR games, or exploring certain VR environments, may require participants' leaving home. At the same time, people should be able to play these same games, or explore the same virtual environments, from their homes through tunnel interactivity. Of course, the two kinds of interactive experiences would be qualitatively different.

In any case, my hope is that the elements of both tunnel and spiral interactivity will be brought together one day and put at the participants' disposal so they will be able to flip back and forth from tunnel interactivity to spiral interactivity at their own will. To illustrate a sense in which a similar kind of flipping between the two kinds of interactivity might already be going on, let us imagine a person sitting in a karaoke bar with a walkman on. This person is able to switch back and forth from tunnel interactivity (i.e. listening to the music privately) to spiral interactivity (i.e. providing a community of listeners for a singer who projects his or her voice).

It goes without saying that this ability to switch between the two types of interactivity will inevitably change some of the current social conventions but this change is inevitable.

Have you ever had an urge to slip into your own, tunnel-like, virtual world during certain social occasions? Well, VR of the future may provide you with a chance to escape from spiral interactivity when it gets too formal and overbearing as well as to escape from tunnel interactivity when it becomes too futile and claustrophobic. The choice will be all yours.

References

Chesire, Stuart
1996 "Latency and the Quest for Interactivity," http://ResComp.Stanford.EDU/~cheshire

Gates, Bill
1995 "Bill Gates talking with David Frost: Microsoft Chairman reveals the 'Road Ahead'," http://gigaplex.com/tv/bill.htm

Heim, Michael
1998 Virtual Realism, Oxford University Press

Mann, Doug
1996 "The Body as an 'Object' of Historical Knowledge," Dialogue, Vol. 35, No. 4

McKirahan, Richard
1994 Philosophy Before Socrates, Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

O'Farrel, Mary Ann and Vallone, Lynne, editors
1999 Virtual Gender: Fantasies of Subjectivity and Embodiment, The University of Michigan Press

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