Immersion

When in class one day an interesting topic came up. We were discussing the book John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" which is a wonderful series of essays based around how cultural and societal views are shaped by art of the time. While discussing this book, we arrived at the topic of oil paintings. Oil paintings were a huge leap forward at the time because of their realism.
Oil paintings were not only realistic because of the skill of the artist in drawing lifelike images. They were realistic because they added another sense to the equation, the sense of touch, as well as further exemplifying the sense of sight. With oil paintings, texture became noticeable. The viewer could feel really connected to that image more so then with any other art form at the time.
With such realism, the viewer is able to feel as if they are part of the image, they become lost in it. This is the same type of escape our own culture looks for through video games. One could argue movies or books for the same purpose, but I have to disagree. With video games the action is focused solely on you the player. You often see through the eyes of your character, and people speak directly to you. This is often far more immersive then other media.
Video games are a form of media that was probably first introduced purely for entertainment purposes, video games at that time were far too primitive to be really immersive. Since then advances in technology, and writing in video games have given rise to an immersive medium unique to our culture. Video games are a medium which now allows people to escape to a perfected reality.
I believe that our society will never stop searching for some type of immersion, some escape from the real world. I don’t believe it’s because people necessarily dislike their current lives, but instead that people become bored with being complacent.They strive for excitement and a break from the normal.
In the future technology will no doubt further itself to the point where people can use virtual reality for their form of escape. However, as fascinatingly close as that may put us to the level of once science fiction-like utopias, the more control we give our technology over our lives, the closer we come to a science fiction dystopia as well.