Invited by the Collège de France assembly at the suggestion of Pr Anne Fagot-Largeault.
Abstract
Contemporary post-modern culture, now known as the "information society", is saturated with virtual reality. Information and communication technologies are the driving force behind this virtual reality, which is establishing a new Lebenswelt. It is the "digital revolution" that has made these new technologies possible, resulting from the fusion of two different technologies: artificial intelligence technology and sensory technology. The first is the intensification of the human faculty of "thinking", enabling us to overcome the organic restrictions of the body within the body itself. The second is the extension of the human faculty of "feeling", enabling us to overcome spatio-temporal restrictions outside the body.
The absolutely new feature of the combination of these two technologies lies in its ability to combine "noesis" and "aisthesis": the object of thought (the logical-mathematical unit) and the object of sensation (sense data) are transformed into each other. Cyberspace, the ontological basis of virtual reality, has its origins in this technological convergence. Virtual reality, based on cyberspace, can distance itself from the natural world, overcoming the natural restrictions so long associated with the human condition. Cyberspace is not really space: there is no extensionality or distance. And where there is no distance, there is no time. In this hybrid space, where identity and difference coexist indistinguishably, nothing substantial remains. Simultaneity and instantaneity bring about the "deterritorialization" of things.
Culture, seen as the product of human spiritual activity, is fundamentally a transformation or variation of nature. And even if culture transcends nature, it cannot appear if it is cut off from it. Information culture", which is ontologically based on virtual reality, can escape human control, insofar as virtual reality transcends the limits of any conceivable human experience. In contrast, culture in the ordinary sense refers to the human mind that is objectified in natural reality. It thus remains within the realm of human activities, which do not allow it to transcend nature.
Virtual reality therefore appears to be a highly artificial production, in line with the teachings of Lao-tzu. Indeed, Lao-tzu asserted that we should add nothing artificial to the world, and leave things as they are, so as to know reality as it really is, and then act rightly.
