Transformation of the Place of Human in Virtual Reality

Author Name(s): Liliya M. Salyakhieva, Zhanna V. Saveleva
Author Email: gedier@mail.ru

Abstract

The article presents the approaches and interpretations of virtual reality of various authors, reveals the features of concept interpretation. The features of virtual reality associated with relevance, interactivity, autonomy, immateriality, ephemerality are given. According to J. Baudrillard, the virtual reality simulacra fill the social space, contribute to overproduction of meanings, alienation of human, blurring the boundaries of objective social reality and virtual reality. The article considers the phenomenon of virtual human defined as a new type of personality in social reality, in which socialization, education, work, leisure, interaction, and information flow take place in virtual reality. According to J. Deleuze, it arises the phenomenon of a new “virtual body”, which does not reflect any referent in reality, functioning with the help of imagination and fantasies. Virtual reality provides individual freedoms and opportunities, but at the same time creates restrictions for the development of personality, associated, for example, with the Internet addiction. In the article, the authors analyze the data of large research centers regarding the use of the Internet. The results suggest that there are 81% of Internet users, 62% of daily users among Russians. The data indicate that the Internet has entered the life of most Russians, who can be called people of the new Homo virtualis formation.

Introduction

The development of modern society leads to the fact that virtual reality arises in addition to the objective reality of existence. Virtuality is considered as a special world, different from the material, really existing one in the broadest sense in science. It is difficult to determine the appearance time of virtuality as a satellite of objective reality. Some scientists believe that it has always been, while others tend to consider it as an attribute of a postmodern society. Virtuality has many different manifestations and can act as an element of the cultural evolution of mankind, as a certain need of the psyche, as a manifestation of increasing computerization and informatization of society. Whatever approach the researcher takes, the study of the virtual human being is of great scientific interest and opens up a huge field for study. The relevance of the scientific analysis of virtual reality is due to its complexity and ambiguity, many interpretations and approaches of this phenomenon are associated with this. Virtual reality is a self-contained, evolving, rapidly changing structure, which creates additional difficulties for its study. The analysis of virtual reality and its attributes involves an appeal to a whole complex of diverse social processes and meanings that accompany this process. This raises an important research question about changing the role of human and his place in virtuality: from the creator of meanings, images and symbols in the modern world, human becomes a hostage to symbolic reality.

Conclusion

The emergence of such a phenomenon as a virtual human suggests that virtual reality becomes independent and selfsufficient. In the social space, the connection between the referent and the sign is broken, the virtual world becomes an objective social reality for a new type of person. The place of the individual in symbolic reality is gradually changing. If it was possible to talk about the creative, creating the beginning of human in the virtual space at first, now we can notice the individual shifting to the position of the dependent element of the new system, when the lack of access to the symbolic reality of new media creates serious discomfort for the user.

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