Viewing Thread:
"Something for Bell"

An article about what we were discussing a couple of weeks ago with Baudrillard "Simulation and Simulacra" and the notions of reality and alternate realities:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3135247.stm

A bloke making a living selling items for a non-existent, online world.
Does this count as an "alternate reality"

Belldandy wrote:
> hence what you see on the screen when you open the
> file is that file but visually represented so as to be
> understandable.

But your eyes and brain are doing the same thing every moment of your waking day.

But that's what I was saying - there's a virtual world and a real world. Objects from one can't exist within the other, but ultimately the virtual world is meaningless because it can't possibly be touched and anything that exists on it came from the real world.

cookie monster wrote:
> I dont agree.
>
> If you have a word document that says "hello" or something
> like that. And you save it to the hard drive, then that word document
> exists, it cant be any other way. Saying that it doesnt exist because
> you cant touch it or because it needs electricity to be accessible
> doesnt change the fact that it is waiting on the hard drive, to be
> recalled when you want to view it again.
>
> No?

In a way. The document exists but crucially not in the form you see it, it exists as computer code, then it is Word which translates this for you to use, hence what you see on the screen when you open the file is that file but visually represented so as to be understandable.

I dont agree.

If you have a word document that says "hello" or something like that. And you save it to the hard drive, then that word document exists, it cant be any other way. Saying that it doesnt exist because you cant touch it or because it needs electricity to be accessible doesnt change the fact that it is waiting on the hard drive, to be recalled when you want to view it again.

No?

cookie monster wrote:
> monkey_man wrote:
> Things that exist have dimensions. Data doesn't. Simple as that.
>
> Data must have dimension, however small.

Well, it has size, but to exist in our REAL world, it must have height, depth, width and the ability to exist through time with some sort of electronic "life-support" (a hard-drive).

Insane Bartender wrote:
> But it is real though. It takes up physical space, it uses up
> electricity, it requires real hardware to run on etc.

Computer data has a size, yes, but it isn't physically there to touch. The burning paper example is good, but you then have the ashes to expose of. If you break a hard drive there is no recovery for the data as it just...disapears - like it wasn't there in the first place. Also, it's the computer that uses the electricity - not the data itself. The data is kept "alive" on the spinning discs inside though a series of logic gates. Please don't make me remember any of my Uni stuff - it's been so long and it's too hot!

Insane Bartender wrote:
> By the same token, if I burn a piece of paper, does it still exist?
> Only as ash. The same as the data that is overwritten lives on as
> whatever has overwritten it.

Hmm. I'm not entirely convinced it's the same thing. The paper is being physically changed into ash, whereas the data example is old being deleted and new put in its place. I don't think comparisons can be made between data and physical things - to me data is more like a mental, intangible property.

data exists in metal silicon and electricity.

monkey_man wrote:
> Things that exist have dimensions. Data doesn't. Simple as that.

Data must have dimension, however small.

Things that exist have dimensions. Data doesn't. Simple as that.