(23:15)

     What is ‘being human’ between settled and unsettled lands?  In simulation, a Virtual Reality designer is encouraged to believe there is nothing ‘outside’ of their virtual environments.  Both the design and designer encourage a desire for complete enveloping illusion.

     Virtual Reality designers are not encouraged to make distinctions between simulation and what is simulated.  And so, the Designer is never encouraged to look reflexively at the artifice they make.

     Virtual Reality design simultaneously ‘is’ and ‘is not’.  Thus, the Virtual Reality designer’s experience rides upon this celebration of artifice -- upon their expert manipulation of each illusion.

     And so, the holy grail of total immersive Virtual Reality design is ultimately either psychotic or hallucinogenic.

                    “Virtual Reality is electronic acid.”

                                        Timothy Leary