Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
4.6
Concluding Remarks
When heavily limiting interactive freedom and expressivity, virtual worlds can
materialize notions, simple philosophical concepts, thought experiments, a various
array of hypotheses and world views. In disclosing such possibilities, digital media-
tion is crucially contributing to the rise of a new humanism. Both through my games
and in my more conventionally textual academic work, the specifi c contribution of
computer simulations and videogames to the development of contemporary culture
can be recognized as twofold:
1. The interactive experiences of virtual worlds are recognized as having the inher-
ent effects of fragmenting, distorting and extending human rationality.
2. Acting in virtual worlds as well as designing such worlds are philosophical prac-
tices that can be complementary to - and in certain instances alternative to - tra-
ditional forms of mediation of thought.
Facilitated by the increase of computer literacy, the growing accessibility of
development tools as well as the progressive diffusion of digital media in social
practices, more philosophical questions are bound to specifi cally arise within virtual
worlds. It is also likely that the new generations of philosophers will more and more
frequently develop, test and distribute their ideas (new questions and classical philo-
sophical interrogatives alike) in the form of interactive digital media content. In my
work, I propose to call this new fi eld of applied philosophy 'augmented ontology'
7
(Gualeni
2013
).
To be sure, I am not claiming that digital simulations and videogames are going
to be or should be the dominant form of mediation of the twenty-fi rst century.
What I am advocating for is, instead, a less intransigent approach to the articula-
tion, the manipulation and the diffusion of ideas, notions and hypotheses. In other
words, I am proposing an approach to the development of culture that can, where
contextually desirable, hybridize or even substitute traditional media forms with
7
The purpose of 'augmented ontologies' as a philosophical domain is that of understanding the
effects of the experiences of virtual worlds on human thought and the potentialities for digitally
mediated simulations to serve human beings in 'overcoming' the traditional (predigital) boundar-
ies of human kinds of ontologies. According to the perspectives offered by 'augmented ontologies'
and inspired by Heidegger's existential phenomenology, the term 'overcoming' is not understood
in the dialectical meaning of the German term
Überwindung
(surpassing) but must be embraced in
the nuanced conjunction of two other terms:
Andenken
(rememoration) and
Verwindung
(distor-
tion, twisting, incorporation), 'a going-beyond that is both an acceptance (or 'resignation') and a
'deepening” (Vattimo
1991
, xxvi).
To be sure, what I am claiming here is that even when armed with digital hammers, our projectual
efforts cannot ever aspire to break down the operational, intellectual and perceptive walls of our
inescapable humanity. Technologies, however, traditionally assisted humanity in making such
walls more and more fl exible to a point that we could progressively bend them, deform them and
increase our room for manoeuvre in thinking about reality and refl ecting on ourselves. It is in this
sense that virtual worlds are understood in my work as mediators that afford the augmentation of
human kinds of ontologies.
