10.7456/ctc_2017_05

VIRTUAL REALITY AS TECHNOLOGY

Deniz YENGİN

 

ABSTRACT

While technology is transforming itself from tool to aim, machines started to use individuals. The machines that are being developed to facilitate human life have become indispensible for individuals’ lives because of the advantages they offer. This approach, which is the mile stone of technological determinism, is changing the relation between the technology and the machine, and the relation between humans and machines. In this study, through the questions “Is technology a machine or are humans machines?” human’s and technology’s future is reviewed with a critical approach and discussed with a recommended model. According to this approach, human develops the machine that facilitates his/her life and then depends on that machine emotionally and continues his/her life with it. This emotional commitment helps the human produce continuously. Behaving so, the human tries to improve the life by enabling the machine to serve more advantageous features. With today’s technology, human’s approach to virtual reality, and hence to technological determinism has changed and at this point it turned out to be the cause of the virtual determinism’s occurrence. Now the human, who has adopted a lifestyle interpenetrated with virtual reality, has demanded technology to improve this way and with the user-base for virtual reality googles spreading he/she has had the chance to live different experiences. In a virtual world, individuals who have experienced the data which have been coded and designed beforehand like it was real, are able to play games, design, communicate, and do shopping, watch news in places where they cannot be in real life. If it is briefly stated they do most of the activities they can and can’t do in their real lives. This situation increases human’s demand towards virtual reality, canalizes technology’s development in this direction, and with this developing technology, human’s evolution accelerates. As a result of this, technology’s benefits increases thanks to virtual reality glasses. In this context, throughout the study, virtual reality technology is observed. With a group of twelve children aged 9 to12, an experiential study is conducted with virtual reality glasses. A chosen Playstation4 Pro VR themed game was played by the children who participated in the study, and their reactions are recorded then their attitudes towards virtual reality were analyzed by measuring the game’s real-time image and the child’s reactions to it.

      Keywords: technology, virtual reality, virtuality

 

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