David Weinberger's Essay: The Unreliable Reality

The Unreliable Realities

Internet has come to be a widely used technological advancement. One can see this as a progressive move because it enables the masses to be accessible to a variety of information, but at the same time, due to the lack of proper standardization, it is difficult to ensure that only best and true knowledge enters the web. However, due to multiple voices spreading over the internet, the world in the lived reality and the virtual reality tend to differ drastically. The aim of the paper is to explore this gap and highlight the different ways in which the reliability of information over web is questionable, both on a theoretical front and psychological front. Therefore, the idea is that in living through the two different

Furthermore, people tend to use the virtual reality as a benchmark to change the real world. Michel Lewis shares this idea wherein he argues that Internet is a shared space, which can cause social change by connecting millions of people spread across the world (Lewis, 2007). Lewis argues how in a short span of time, the Internet has changed the world massively. David Weinberger also extends on this point in his paper and suggests how Internet has come to provide a distinct space to people, which is very different from the lived realities. Mead also expresses in the paper how Blogs is an important concept that links the virtual world to the real world and provides a boundless space for expression. The argument supported by the three authors is that there is a gap between the virtual world and real world, and there is a growing influence of

By gaining access to varied information and platforms, one is able to discover and explore different parts of oneself. A common point shared by Lewis, Mead and Weinberger is that Internet holds the potential to create different beings. This is only to suggest that it has the capacity of personal transformation. Weinberger explains that the “web makes new space for identity formation” (110). First, it allows people to put their identities out there in the way of their choosing. Second, it also gives a space for other people to explain that online persona. Perhaps, this should not come as an alien thought because social transformation cannot begin in the absence of personal transformation. Through the exchange of ideas and information and the development of newer ways of being, one comes in close contact with diversity and questions one’s ideology. Perhaps, Internet enables this process by two broad ways- through the access to varied information and the social media sites. By accessing different knowledge systems, one is able to understand the gaps and loops in one’s existence and tend to find ways to cover them. This was also highlighted by Lewis when he states “To Marcus, it was normal that he could punch a few buttons on the machine and read what the man who was executed by the state this morning had eaten last night” (97). The virtual world is a mutually constructed space that is