Project: Pick a poten­tial the­sis issue you want to explore and respond to it.

Theory: I’m very inter­ested in how the vir­tual and the phys­i­cal realms trig­ger affect each other and effect changes or events in each other via ongo­ing feed­back mech­a­nisms. It bog­gles my mind to think about how many (phys­i­cal) actions we take in the real world as a result of (vir­tual) infor­ma­tion fed to us through net­works, where data exist as light and are lit­er­ally weight­less. How do flashes of light become man­i­fested in the phys­i­cal, expe­ri­en­tial world?

My the­ory is that the user is the point of inter­sec­tion (and inter­ac­tion) between the phys­i­cal and vir­tual realms, between objects and infor­ma­tion. The Earth enacts grav­ity and other phys­i­cal effects. Computing sys­tems enact data trans­fer and pro­cess­ing. But only sen­tient beings can find mean­ing in both, because they can under­stand what grav­ity means and under­stand what data trans­fer is by extrap­o­lat­ing out­wards, tak­ing what they grasp about these physical/virtual sys­tems and apply­ing them to hypo­thet­i­cal sce­nar­ios. I can imag­ine what would hap­pen if I threw a glass vase up in the air: It would fall back down, hit the ground, and prob­a­bly break into pieces. I’ve never thrown a vase before, but I can model and pre­dict that out­come with near-certainty because I have inferred the rules that gov­ern the system.

So, as a user/sentient being, my job is to intepret inputs, deduce the rules of the sys­tem (that would pro­duce those inputs), decide on a course of action, and then phys­i­cally man­i­fest that action. In the case of a dig­i­tal sys­tem, my phys­i­cal out­put (throw­ing a vase, press­ing a key, click­ing the mouse) is input for the vir­tual sys­tem, which responds accord­ing to its own rules, and on and on the feed­back loop goes.

I don’t think this project was extremely suc­cess­ful at address­ing those ideas, but it’s inter­est­ing nonethe­less. Try it out, and see if you can (1) deduce its rules and then (2) use them toward your own ends. Post a com­ment below with your findings.

Credits: Word list cour­tesy of mieliestronk.com.

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