Cyberspace: Our New Reality

A different conception of virtual reality

ìCities today have no visible limits. In America, they never had. In Europe however, the concept of ìcityî once implied a closed finite entity. The old city had walls and gates. But these have long ceased to function. Are there other types of gates, new gates to replace the gates of the past? Are the new gates those electronic warning systems installed in airports, screening passengers for weapons? Have electronics and, more generally, technology replaced boundaries, the guarded boundaries of the past?î[1]

In the middle of the first decade of the new millenium, there is one fact that many can argue and not agree with, but have to admit: our lives are very quickly immersing into the virtual world, cyberspace. We are not only getting totally dependant, but our lifestyles are changing, our ways of living.

Many can say that the real life will allways be better, that no matter what they (computer scientists) do, what they come up with, looking at a screen and actually being in the spot will never be the same. I agree, I think too that looking at a beach through a screen will never be the same as actually being there. But what if  the idea of cyberspace, the usual idea, the more tactile idea that we have – experiencing the world through a screen – is actually not technologyís furthest reach.

Today, as fascinating as a program can be, as real as a virtual pc to pc game can seem, we canít say that any type of virtual lifestyle replaces the actual being there, touching, smelling, hearing. Technology has been able to create a new environment, ìthe virtual realityî as it is called, but this environment is yet still bounded to certain senses, sight and sound. That is why it can not replace the real thing, because whenever we look away, we are back infront of the computer, inside an enclosed space, talking or playing with people from around the world that are doing the exact same thing as we are.

What if tecnology could in fact satisfy all our senses? What if instead of looking through a screen we could actually be there?

Our brains respond to electric impulses, that is how, for example, we can move one hand. We think of moving it, and the brain, very quickly sends an electric impulse that runs through our nervous system, until it gets to our hand and, thus, the hand moves. We are all made of electricity: Energy, that is what we are.

Not long ago I was listenig to a television program –I wasnít really watching it –about tecnology. They were showing great invensions of today, and this ìmachineî came out. It was a video game, a ping pong game. Nothing fancy, nothing too elaborated, just a regular table tennis were you could move your paddle from left to right. The reader might say that there is nothing new about this, I agree, this type of entertainment has been around since the seventies. The thing the reader does not know, is that the paddle was controlled by the brain. There were not any controls you would move around or buttons to push, just the brain connected directly to the computer.

So what if technology can actually get inside our brains? Forget about screen or speakers that show us a view of the virtual. What if instead of all that hardware we can actually be connected directly to cyberspace?

ìDreams are real as long as they lastî            For our minds, when we are dreaming, everything is real, we might not remember once we are awake, but when we dream we can smell, we can touch, we can listen, we have the entire use of our senses with out physically smelling or seeing. If this is possible in dreams, can it not then be possible in real life? To go directly into the brain with out going through the organs that transform these ìactionsî. If our brain gets the information, if there is something that is making it sense a smell, it really does not have to be there, as long as the brain thinks it is.

So what does this do to our present conception of reality? In this sense the virtual world can be just as real as the world we live in, if our brains actually believe they are living certain situations, it is just as good as the real thing.

Designing and living for/in the virtual World

What then as architects should we do to design for the new millenium? What is our job as modelers of space if the whole conception of space is totally different to what we have believed since the begining of mankind? The main importance of architecture has allways been shelter, that is why architecture began in the first place. So, what happens when we do not actually need that shelter? What is the main purpose of architecture if it is not that? This question I ask but I can not answer.

The whole conception of space, of the new space, the virtual, is totally different to what we have in real life. There are no more distances, there is no more time. I can have a meeting in New York with out actually leaving Montreal. I can meet the same people, look straight at them with out going through the actual process of getting there. I can go from link to link, browsing from store to store, opening windows, closing them, going through stores in Japan, stores in the UK, I can go anywhere, no matter how far, it just depends on bandwidth.

So if in this new Space there is no more time, there are no more distances, there is no need for shelter, there is no gravity; What then is our job as Architects? What are we supposed to design? Will we be obliged to inmerse ourselves to these virtual scenes to create new spaces just for the fun of it?

ìIt doesnít rain in cyberspace, so shelter is not an issue. But privacy certainly is.î[2]

The boundaries that we have established to define our own private spaces have changed, they are now ones and zeros. The only way to separate us from each other is the same way that we are linked with one another: numbers. We separate from each other by firewalls protecting us from identity theifs or other kind of virtual criminals. Are there still boundaries between each of us? There are no more boundaries of time because time is not an issue anymore; boundaries of distance are not an issue anymore either. So how are we to define the space we design in? How are we architects supposed to decide where to build, how big or small to build it, what to build?

Many architectural firms nowadays are designing merely for the virtual. Firms like Asymptote, FOA, NOX, are designing buildings for the virtual world just as they are in the real physical one. Companies like Guggenheim and NYSE have platforms designed by these worldwide known architectural firms which live inside a computer somewhere in the world and can be accesed by any computer anywhere in the planet. How they decide the actual scale of each project is unknown to me. In a way I think that as pioneers to this particular aproach they (Architects) have the liberty to decide, to establish their own boundaries. But the industry is very fastly growing, with time, these boundaries will have to be defined by someone, or something, or do they?

Space is relative, just as time or distance are relative too. But space is normally relative to time and distance, and viceversa. So if we donít have time, and we donít have defined space, and we certainly donít have distance; which is relative to which? How can we define the boundaries necessary to us for survival? Do we still have to create these boundaries? Or will they create themselves?

ìThe city, through the dialectic of its boundaries, is the instrument wherby each absolute is tempered by the other, creating the rich stew we call the urban life, whose events oscillate between the predictable and the volatile.î[3]

In real life, we have natural boundaries, rivers, oceans and mountains define our boundaries, define our space and very much define our time, the time it takes us to breach these boundaries.

So what now? What happens in this infinite space we have created? Is human playing God? Are we creating our own artificial environment with which we might stumble upon one day? Are we ready as humans to take on the responsibility to create our own little infinite world?

There are many questions yet to be answered, and many more questions will arise. But the fact is that we no longer can opose to the electronic era, this age of bytes, the virtual world is in our everyday lives, and everyday we depend more on it.

Our responsibility as Architects is not to go against these virtual transforming forces, but actually understand our grounds, know where we stand in virtual space, understand the great possibilities of changing from our conceptions of architecture as physical structures, into an idea of architecture as virtual structures, virtual order, virtual scenes. Today it may seem very far and very fantastic, but we are definetly getting there and quickly. It seems imposible, but it will happen, and we have to be ready for it, we have to find out the new architecture for the new concept of space-time, without distances, without gravity, without boundaries. A real ìTabula rasaî. We have to start from zero, from the understanding of space. 

Its going to be a very interesting ride and Iím very glad and anxious that I am going to be part of it.

Bibliography

0. Tschumi, Bernard. ìArchitecture and Disjunctionî. MIT Press. 1996

0. Mitchell, William J. ìCity of Bitsî  pg 122.  MIT Press. 1995

0. Waterhouse, Alan. ìBoundaries of the Cityî pg 6. University of Toronto Press. 1993

0. Crow, Dennis. ìPhilosophical Streetsî. Maisoneuve Press. 1990

[1] Tschumi, Bernard. ìArchitecture and Disjunctionî. MIT Press. 1996

[2] Mitchell, William J. ìCity of Bitsî  pg 122.  MIT Press. 1995

[3] Waterhouse, Alan. ìBoundaries of the Cityî pg 6. University of Toronto Press. 1993