“ The role and power of metaphor is rising in our culture. Our modern digital world is a metaphoric world. We make things real by first constructing them as a metaphor, an “as if” type. Then we slowly deepen the metaphor, adding more layers of meaning and realism, until metaphor slowly passes whatever invisible barrier lies between the real and fake, and it becomes “is” — it becomes “real.” Pinocchio is at last a real boy, earning the love of his mother. ¶ We have made as-if realities, which someday may be felt as real. We are making as-if communities, as-if democracies, as-if intelligence, as-if life. One by one, we are moving all existing entities into the as-if realm, and then we’ll pump them up till they cross that Pinocchio line and are indistinguishable from real.
Tags:
culture
philosophy
— Kevin Kelly, in his essay “As If”
