Today, human communication is augmented through the use of digital media into a type of cybernetic union.
Digital communication is the primary source of this change. As we communicate, we pass along aspects of ourselves, avatars, who are our Actual World personas inside the Virtual World. The effect of transitioning across the digital border shapes our perception of existence.
The human mind is impacted equally by the digital and physical worlds.
The brain has two sections that deal with interpreting experience; the “new” brain and the “old” brain. The mind uses logic and experience to determine that the initial emotional “old” brain response we have to a virtual image is not real and uses the “new” brain to do so. Though we can rationalize our emotions, we can’t turn them off.
The fact that we perceive an image first as if it were real, connects it to reality. Images in media are not the same as what they depict in the actual world, but since the perception of them alters behavior, leading to action shows that images in digital media are real to us. They become memory and experience.
The physical and digital worlds are coming together. Our experience of life is our existence. And this existence is who we are.
