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Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 13:06:57 -0500
From: David Cobb <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Reality's Geographical Limits?
Sender: David Cobb <[log in to unmask]>





>WORTH THINKING ABOUT: THE UNREALITY OF VIRTUAL REALITY
>      Denmark's leading science writer, Tor Norretranders, comments on life
>in the information age:
>      "The information society can seem stressful because it contains not
>too much information but too little. Nobody will traverse the material
>terrain anymore; people will merely sit plotting routes on a map. New
>technologies are being introduced under the banner of virtual reality. A TV
>over our eyes, headphones on our ears, and sensory gloves on our hands (and
>in the long run our whole bodies): we are in virtual reality. The author of
>'Alice in Wonderland,' the mathematician Lewis Carroll, predicted this
>development a hundred years ago when he wrote the story of 'Sylvie and
>Bruno Concluded.' At one point, the narrator meets a figure by the name of
>Mein Herr, with whom he exchanges the following remarks:
>      "Mein Herr looked so thoroughly bewildered that I thought it best to
>change the subject. 'What a useful thing a pocket-map is!' I remarked.
>'That's another thing we've learned from your Nation,' said Mein Herr,
>'map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you
>consider the largest map that would be really useful?'
>      "'About six inches to the mile.'
>      "'Only six inches!' exclaimed Mein Herr. 'We very soon got to six
>yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came
>the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the
>scale of a mile to the mile!'
>       "'Have you used it much?' I enquired.
>      "'It has never been spread out, yet,' said Mein Herr: 'the farmers
>objected; they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the
>sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure
>you it does nearly as well.'"

***************************************************************************
David A. Cobb                                           Tel. 617.495.2417
Harvard Map Collection                          FAX  617.496.0440
Harvard College Library                         Email: [log in to unmask]
Cambridge, MA 02138                                     HTTP://hcl.harvard.edu/maps
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