25 September

This to me is the greatest modern wonder. Your home is now connected directly to the entire world, in real-time. While we travel around the world thinking it broadens our minds (it narrows them), and thinking visiting somewhere somehow gives us a more ‘authentic’ experience of that place (it doesn’t), you can sit at home and have the world come to you instead, in much more meaningful ways. In virtual ways. And you in turn can impact back upon that world, it’s not a passive consumption thing. ‘Virtual’ has come to mean ‘not real’. That’s seriously wrong. Our entire culture is virtual, and always has been. I can go to the Bathurst 1000 and have an experience there that is unique, that’s true. But is it a truer, more authentic experience of the race? Nope. You see hardly any of what’s going on, trackside. They even add screens now to virtualise the event, to make more of it available, ‘live’, which is kinda amusing. Ditto at gigs, where people increasngly pay hundreds to sit in a sweaty stadium and stare at a screen, because the stage is too far away. You will understand, see and experience more of the world through the internet than you could ever possibly hope to, by travelling or ‘being there’. Watch tourists, drunk on the illusion of ‘being there’, actually spend huge amounts of their time desperately trying to capture the experience on their phones. Virtualising it. The true meaning of all experience is virtual. ‘Being there’ is an illusion, a powerful myth that drives our travel culture. A culture incapable of being anywhere, and accumulating sights thinking it will fill that void. To be somewhere, you have to virtualise it. And you don’t need to leave home to do that.