Colonizing Virtual Reality Construction of the Discourse of Virtual Reality

New technologies do not appear from nowhere as a mystical spark of inspiration from the mind of one individual. Nor are they inevitably accepted for their self-evident benefits. A technology emerges through a process involving broader cultural, linguistic, institutional and technological contexts. One clear illustration of this process can be drawn with the appearance of "virtual reality" in 1989, and the subsequent popularization of the idea through the media.

On June 7, 1989 the computer-aided design software company Autodesk and the eclectic computer company VPL announced a new technology called "virtual reality."1 In marketing this new technology (which represented a major shift in thinking about the nature of computers), the developers and promoters drew on a range of tropes:

VR is shared and objectively present like the physical world, composable like a work of art, and as unlimited and harmless as a dream. When VR becomes widely available, around the turn of the century, it will not be seen as a medium used within physical reality, but rather as an additional reality. VR opens up a new continent of ideas and possibilities. At Texpo 89 we set foot on the shore of this continent for the first time.
--VPL Research at Texpo 89, in Rheingold, p.154.

The above quote draws several analogies to introduce Virtual Reality. The statements do not describe the nature or features of an actual product--they introduce the new idea by comparison to familiar, comfortable cultural icons. They compare VR with "a work of art," "a dream," "an additional reality" and a "new continent." With just a few words they have invoked the traditions of art and representation, psychology and metaphysics, ontological philosophy, discovery, colonization and the frontier.