Metaphysics and Multimedia

The effects of multimedia on users are profound, affecting their relation to physical reality and metaphysical perspective. The multimedia user experiences within the electronic environment a spatio-temporal freedom from certain important physical constraints of the real world. Electronic configurations are free from constructional, material, structural or gravitational constraints operating in the physical world. This freedom is liberating: the imagination is given a powerful tool with which to explore externalized representations of ideal environments. But a potentially destructive potential arises. External tools of the imagination become increasingly sophisticated at the expense of the ability to master the internal imagination. We externalize at the price of inner vision. There is a possibility of greater alienation from the physical world and from the spatial and structural intuition with which we inhabit reality. A loss of these critical relationships to physical reality may mean we encounter a loss of metaphysical lucidity to the world.