ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with an apparently simpler case that deals with a more concrete subject: the question of whether there is life in outer space. For virtual is contrasted unfavourably with actual or real, and so to call electronic environments virtual is to prejudge their reality and consequently their significance. Every environment, virtual or otherwise, has its own characteristic aesthetic. Different virtual environments produce distinctive uses and patterns of time, varying it in speed, direction, order, continuity, thickness, layers, singularity and multiplicity, and other such traits. The computer-generated 'virtual' world is not entirely new, for we also encounter so-called virtuality outside the computer. Consider the distinctive spatiotemporal-dynamic environments of memory, of history, of imagination, of letter-writing, of the telephone, and of each of the different arts, especially fiction and film. To paraphrase Hegel, the real is the virtual and the virtual is the real.
