Artificial Paradises?
Considering the World of Electronic Media - and Other Worlds

Instead of talking about the dangers of media worlds (where I'm more inclined to criticize the criticism) I want, first of all, to talk about the fascination of media worlds: of hyperspeed, the lightness of being, globality and interactivity.

But still more I would then like to talk about the repercussions of electronic worlds for our everyday experience. First of all, of course, about the current virtualization of thereal. But then in particular about a revalidation, a reevaluation of non-media forms of experience, such as can be observed today, complementing the advance of electronic media. The experience of electronic paradises simultaneously revalues older and other forms of experience in contrast. These are concentrated around keywords such as 'matter', 'body', 'singularity', or 'event'. Where hyperspeed, transformability and artificiality are no longer a dream, but have become realizable, inertia, constancy and givenness are no longer antiquated, but become interesting once again. And valuable.  In general - for older as well as younger generations - it can be noted that intensive experience of media increases sensitivity for the specificity of different forms of media experience. We are beginning to switch between several forms of reality as a matter of course, and to value and make use of their contrasts.

One should face up to this plurality and reduce it neither through media-euphoria nor through body-fanaticism, nor in anyother way to a single pole. A person today should be able to move in different kinds of world competently and pleasurably: in electronic worlds as well as in older or more natural worlds, or in those which have yet to be developed.