Double trouble

I remember a discussion with a friend, some years ago, who was complaining about the way people create web content and post photos of themselves. He argued that the digital space is simply a representation of ourselves and should not be used to invent a second identity or digital personality different form the real one, even if technology would allow us to do so.

In fact, I have always had a problematic relationship with multiple personalities or identities. I am aware that there might be different reasons to have or use them, such as the desire to be someone else, to live in other conditions or places, to look or behave in different ways, to get rid of known limitations or to acquire unexperienced strengths. Our identity is such a complex construct, comprised of features like character, behavior, experiences and relations that it simply proves impossible for it to be transferred in its wholeness to a computer. The key to understanding the development of digital realities is abstracting from the real world. Computer games and avatars are the forerunners of such a reduced and limited model.

Today, it has become a habit to look at our digital devices and to scroll through endless feeds. Digital information is always accessible and easy to use. Many of us become part of communities by posting and sharing information through the internet, contributing to a gigantic web of content and connections. Looking and interacting with digital information of known, supposed or unknown sources has never been so easy and is binding a huge amount of our attention every day. However, the main business of the internet has become to collect data and process this information. The whole process is extensive and untransparent (for the user) but very important to the development of applications and business models.

Virtual realities are getting more and more popular today as hardware and software applications have more power to construct them. We might still wonder what features would constitute such a realm or what sense a second reality would make to our personal life. Based on the experience, and how we use digital technologies every day, the mere availability of such a world would be very tempting and probably enough reason to try it and, in the worst case, to get lost.

Having an exact copy of our reality transferred to the digital world would be useless. The aim is to build a space with the illusion to be real. Technology cannot clone us yet, and there are good arguments that it won't happen in the future. However, a second reality is fascinating and somehow frightening at the same time. The important question is what it would change for us and how we would define the border between those two worlds, as long as we can differentiate them.

I feel there is nothing genuinely bad about digital technologies and virtual realities, as long as it remains our own decision to use or ignore them and our own power to judge them. Nevertheless, having access to a reality that is more desirable and attractive than our real life would put our voluntary and reasonable decision making at risk. And ultimately it would limit our willingness and capacity to change the real world we are living in.