Virtual reality
and the myriad experiences available online.
It has become a matter of widespread concern
that so many users seem to prefer life as it can
be realized online. Mark Slouka in War of the
Worlds: Cyberspace and the High-Tech Assault
on Reality (Basic Books, 1995; Abacus, 1996)
talks of a ‘culture of simulation’ that blurs ‘fi ction
and reality’; and this in his view risks creat-
ing in the public a fear ‘of unmediated reality’,
especially considering our willingness to buy
in to the virtual, that ‘we’re buying in to a fake’.
It follows that reality itself ‘is beginning to lose
its authority’. See cyberspace. See also topic
guide under media issues & debates.
Virtuous circle Term used by researchers into
how media use links with active participation
in politics, and vice-versa: users who take an
interest in news reporting on politics are likely
to complete the ‘virtuous circle’ by being more
likely to take some part in political activity.
Recent research indicates that the most likely
direction is from interest to activity.
Visibility See global scrutiny; privacy.
Visions of order A notion long associated with
the role and function of the journalist is that of
‘bringer-of-light’, of enlightenment. Th e French
writer Jacques Derrida in Writing and Diff erence
(Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978) posed the ‘helio-
logical metaphor’, describing the journalist as a
human version of the heliograph, recorder and
transmitter of light, of revelation to audience.
Th e process is one of envisioning – off ering a
vision of the world: light for others to see by.
In Th e Politics of Pictures: Th e Creation ofthe
Public in the Age of Popular Media (Routledge,
1992) John Hartley takes up this theme in a chap-
ter entitled ‘Heliography: journalism, and the
visualization of truth’. What journalism brings to
light, what it renders visible are, Hartley argues,
‘distant visions of order’. It is not so much the
actual truth that is brought to light as the vision
of truth as visualized in terms of order.
▶Richard V. Ericson, Patricia M. Baraneh and Janet
B.L. Chan, Representing Order: Crime, Law And
Justice in the News Media (Open University, 1991).
Vitaphone Trade name of the first success-
ful synchronous movie sound, introduced in
1926 by Warner Brothers. On 6 August at the
Warner Th eatre in New York, John Barrymore
starred in Don Juan, to the accompaniment of
a Vitaphone 16-inch 33⅓ rpm disc recording of
voice and music. Curiously Don Juan caused less
audience excitement than the Vitaphone shorts
that accompanied it, such as the New York
Philharmonic playing Wagner’s Tannhauser
Overture. Th e real sensation of the ‘Talkies’ wasto horror trilogy’ that French authorities were
blaming the savage stabbing in Saint-Sebastien-
sur-Loire by a teenager of a girl he had invited
for a walk on the youth’s seeming obsession with
Scream movies.
Two similar murders, by teenagers, had alerted
the authorities to the possible infl uence the fi lms
exerted on impressionable young people. An
Observer listing of what seemed to be copy-cat
off ences between 1999 and 2002 indicated that
it was not only teenagers working out fantasies
of violence on real-world victims, but older men
too, or in the case of a murder in Massachussetts
in 2000, a woman and two men wearing Scream
masks.
In his Observer report, Paul Webster quoted
psychiatrists worried ‘about the inability of some
young people to distinguish between reality
and fi ction’. Dave Grossman, American expert
on the psychology and physiology of killing,
would plainly challenge Jib Fowles’s assertions.
His belief, reported by Webster, was that ‘repeti-
tion, desensitization and escalation reduced the
normal human unwillingness to kill’.
Virtual reality Simulation of the real by techno-
logical means, using multi-media inputs – head-
mounted display, data gloves, three-dimensional
audio system and magnetic position tracker
(to name the basics); what has been termed a
‘technological cluster’. Generally, the simulation
of the real exists in that ‘window of realities’, the
TV monitor.
In a paper entitled ‘Th e ultimate display’ for the
Proceedings of the IFIPS Congress 2, published
as early as 1965, Ivan Sutherland defi ned the VR
dream: ‘Th e screen is a window through which
one sees a virtual world. Th e challenge is to make
that world look real, act real, sound real and feel
real.’
Virtual reality technology is three-dimensional
(see 3D) and interactive. It is extensively used in
engineering and architectural design, in medi-
cine and telecommunications. It is potentially a
vital component in reconstructing the past. At
the fi rst Virtual Reality Heritage conference in
Bath, UK, November 1995, IBM’s Brian Collins
described the VR reconstruction of a church that
no longer exists, the Frauenkirche in Dresden,
fifty years after its destruction by bombing.
Using the few drawings and plans and colour
photographs taken by the Nazis, VR technology
provided a detailed reconstruction enabling the
original to be rebuilt.
A more general application of the term ‘virtual
reality’ centres on the worlds ‘out there’ as
brought to users of the computer, the internet