Real vs Virtual

My hesitation towards online resource reliance is the fact that I like to hold physical objects. I like cutting paper, ripping fabrics, moulding armatures, feeling papier mache glue between my fingers, getting paint all over my hands, laying on the lawn on warm summer afternoons, swimming and floating in the water, the wet clay moving through my fingers. I can make a pen do what I want on paper but I cannot get the mouse to create my vision in this virtual reality. I like touching not simply seeing. I need physical not virtual and physical movement not simply clicking. There is something less intimate about talking to and creating for a computer screen and entrusting your thoughts to something that needs external power to be real.

But in a way I am a walking contradiction in the fact that I have reliance on digital photography. I take photos all the time and they are all saved on my computer. I trust that they will be there but I still feel comfort in holding negatives and photo paper from my 35mm camera, it just feels so much more...real.

I realize it is integral for online technology to be in schools, as it reaches every corner of our modern society but where do we draw the line to what should remain real and what should become virtual? It is, I guess, a fear that our natural world will be second place to this new virtual world. I realize online technologies are revolutionarily sensational but I think in some ways we are losing the physical and gaining too much virtual space. We live in a beautiful world but how often do we notice it with our brain stuck in a virtual reality? Computers connect people around the globe but they also take them away from their lives, arguably a book does the same thing but the assurance that books won’t die when the power cuts out is reassuring to me. I feel nothing is safe and sacred once it has connected with the web. What is private anymore?

I keep numerous art journals and I don’t think those can be transferred onto the internet and put into blog form. There are so many limitations because of the fact that if you have no html knowledge then there are only specific programs that you are limited to. I have more comfort using traditional mediums but it doesn’t mean that I want to completely ignore these new formats. But before this class I was completely ignorant and I am feeling somewhat overwhelmed and out of my element but I hope to keep learning.

I’ll admit to being a pessimist and a sceptic, so, I guess, it is my job to doubt reliance and trust. I just don’t trust technology mostly because I am being engulfed by it, devoured by wires and screens. BUT it doesn’t mean I won’t be able to find benefits to these new tools...