Virtual Institutes: Between Immersion and Communication

1 Three Uses of the Expression ‘Virtual’ In the two expressions “virtual reality” and “virtual community”, the term “virtual” has different meanings. A virtual reality is a depiction or, more generally speaking, a sensuous representation of reality that allows – mainly by means of interactivity – to experience various features of reality without actually being in contact with the reality depicted. Therefore, any interactive depiction that is able to imitate reality to such an extent that a high degree of sensory-motor immersion becomes possible is called a virtual reality (Heim 1998, 6f). Since reality is always much more complex than its depiction and full of unpredictable surprises, hardly ever a user has doubts about the difference between the depiction and the thing depicted. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for preferring the imitation to the reality: at least, the imitation is usually not as dangerous as reality sometimes turns out to be.