Ian Punnett (Twitter) was joined on Friday's show by author and independent researcher Eliott Edge, who presented an illuminating look into the concept of virtual reality (VR). Edge is a self-admitted skeptic regarding the promise of VR in any aspect of the human experience. "I'm really against all this stuff," he confessed. The ultimate reality is consciousness itself as an information processing system, Edge asserted, noting VR is "real enough" and suffers from the problem of limitless and consequence-free experience.
The dilemma with electronic VR entertainment is it promises endless satisfaction but it cannot deliver any satisfaction because one can never get enough from it, Edge continued. "What we're really being divorced from is consciousness and interaction with agents that are deserving of love," he suggested. The spiritual reality of existing as a conscious human being interacting with other conscious human beings is that life gets messy, Edge explained. "If you always get what you want [with VR], you'll never grow," he added. According to Edge, the more we learn about VR the more it will push us to understand ourselves. VR is a "meta metaphor" that can describe culture, physics, society, and language, he noted.
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Open Lines followed in the latter part of the program. A caller in Montreal described visiting a virtual reality exhibit, The Infinite, which transports viewers to an immersive visual experience aboard the International Space Station. "In terms of technology we're very far from having a sensory complete VR," he noted. The caller commented on the philosophical nature of Eliott Edge's previous VR discussion (see above). "We impose a virtual reality on the real reality," he said. Howard from Vancouver, Washington, wondered about a link between virtual reality and psychic intuition. If someone was really immersed in a virtual reality of a real place on the planet, could someone with psychic abilities who was at the actual location at the same time sense their presence, Howard pondered.
Reed in Los Angeles told Ian he moved to California to chase the dream of film and television production. He's currently working on a Netflix project. "You get here and you realize... all the people that you thought were amazing and all the success you thought was amazing, and the lives that people live is just kind of made up," Reed revealed. It doesn't contain any substance, he added. Reed explained how he is able to briefly reconnect to what our ancestors were tuned into when he travels and disconnects from communication technologies. He suggested media and consumerism may indeed be stealing our souls.
News segment guest: Tim Binnall