Will there be anyone even communicating in traditional penta-sensory form in 50 years time to remark about how the oxymoronic concept of Virtual Reailty has been realised as Real Virtuality? The idea of an atrophied population of VR nodes living out itravenous existences in their cyberspatial isolation chambers is based on the empirical premise that a reality of the senses can be constructed with a powerful combination of visual, aural and tactual technology feeds.
Such an alternative existence raises innumerable philosophical considerations from the past. Bishop Berkeley contested that a tree would remain in existence when we avert our gaze fro mit, and it is only because all reality is sustained as an idea in the mind of God that continuity is preserved. From a philosophical perspective, it could be seen as the Cartesian bridge between the dual reailties of mind and body, an alternative existence interacted by the mind but piloted by the body. As man's frontiers have expanded, otherworldly realities such as the depths of sea or space may outstrip any phantasm of our own, or even more neuromantically, of machines' making.
It has been heralded as signalling the decline of human interaction and civilisation. Reality then, could be defined as ideas in the mind of an agent. Then, in what way is VR worthy of less credence than the world of our dreams.