Merel Mirage

Emotions Encoded

The world on the other side of the screen: a place where one can dream. For
more than three years I have been sitting behind the computer screen, acting
and reacting in parallel worlds, all running at the same time. Worlds in
windows, piled up on my desktop. Windows for Netscape browsers, for
downloading software, for graphical applications, for private and business
correspondence, for the programming of my Web site, for discussion groups,
for talk sessions with friends, and for real-time connections to virtual
communities, such as ‘beachside’ at MIT’s MediaMOO, or ‘Stonehenge fields’ at
LambdaMOO. A busy digital life. The more windows I decided to open, the
more I got involved in the life on the screen, and the stronger impulses I
needed from reality to make me aware of its existence; the sound of sirens,
the smell of food, or my name being called.
...
Is any sort of human emotional exchange possible through the wires? Or is sharing in
cyberspace an illusion, and are we just triggered by textual anonymity and misled by
the sensation of our own thoughts bounced back to us? Do words hurt in cyberspace?
There is no frame of reference like there is in our material world. (Francis Picabia
says somewhere, “Our heads are made round so our minds can change direction.”)