Total Recall: Postmodern Virtualities

There are a couple quotes I really liked from this reading the first was “’Virtual Reality’ is a more dangerous term since it suggest that reality may be multiple or take many forms” This is a subject that the science fiction and fantasy genres have explored the alternate realities, parallels and dimensions. One of my favorite movies about Virtual reality would have to be  Total Recall Trailer (1990) The movie explores virtual realities and technologically produced alternatives to “real” life. Here is a quick summary of the movie from IMDB “When a man goes for virtual vacation memories of the planet Mars, an unexpected and harrowing series of events forces him to go to the planet for real, or does he?”  Another quote I really liked was “The culture is increasingly simulational in the sense that the media often changes the things that it treats, transforming the identity of originals and referentialites.” This is a heavy quote to unpack and hopefully In class we can work through it but I think this quote means that because media changes culture instead of mirrors it, when media changes the culture does as well, this creates an instability on original or authentic, giving a flux in our references.