David Loong Response #1 to Morse

 Morse states that “television epitomizes a new ontology of the everyday: vast realms of the somewhat-less-than-real to which significant amounts of free time are devoted to on a routine, cyclical basis”  (197). I found it interesting to consider virtual reality – and the forms of entertainment possible within – through this lens. VR blurs the lines between space and “nonspace” (197) in that it may eventually be a fictitious realm that may not provide a “dreamlike displacement” (197) like the TV or the freeway. And yet it does provide an escape from everyday reality in allowing its users to create nonspace from their imaginations. Currently, VR may function similarly to the TV or the freeway in that it allows users to experience someone else’s created, imaginary world, and yet we may soon be in an era where we can create our own nonspace and inhabit it – one that is “a city, indeed a world in miniature” (198) and one that is “protected by exposure to the natural or public world” (198). There’s a meta-quality to VR whereby we may be able to go into digital malls, freeways, or watch TV inside it, but the difference may be its eventual empowerment of the individual to create instead of merely consume.