The world has been changed to such an extent by technology that we could begin to use the term ‘virtual reality’ to refer to the world in general. ManuelCastells calls it "the culture of real virtuality", we are surrounded by images and media that recreate and ‘re-present’ an idea of our world. For example, photography does not necessarily record reality anymore because images can be manipulated, and reality is not as it seems. Communication is enhanced in every aspect thanks to digital technologies, but they also make the manipulation of information easier, and not necessarily identifiable.
Futhermore, since the invention of television we are bombarded with virtual worlds and virtual people. According to Timothy Leary: "Most Americans have been living in Virtual Reality since the proliferation of television." At the beginning (1945-75) television consisted of a few national channels, often broadcasting only in the evening hours. Then it offered a straightforward "realistic" representation of the world. There used to be narrators addressing the audience directly both at the beginning and at the end of programs thus marking the division between reality and the suspension of disbelief. We now watch soap operas that are broadcasted three or four times a week, allowing us to watch the progress of the characters’ lives over a realistic time scale. The characters are talked about as if they were real people, and the media even reports a major event in the soap opera as if it were news, they are blurring reality and fiction.
What we are currently experiencing for the third time in this country with the TV programme Big Brother is the most extreme show of ‘real virtuality’. The participants are in a constructed environment, their every move monitored. It is presented to the viewer as a ‘reality TV’ show, where the viewer can watch the contestants twenty-four hours a day (over the Internet). The Big Brother world is a construction of reality, manipulated and controlled by the programme makers. Big Brother films real people but then plots and edits their activities like a drama, the participants are characters in the drama rather than ‘real’ people. Viewers can interact with the programme by voting out a contestant every week, making them feel they have some control over the outcome therefore their participation is significant. But what the viewers are shown on the half hour daily TV slot, is a vastly edited down version of the past twenty-four hours, obviously not reality and obviously controlled by the editors not the viewers. Yet it attracts millions of viewers daily – perhaps a reflections of how viewers are much more attracted by watching someone else’s life, rather than living their own lives!