Real Virtuality: Creating the next normal with the crutches of technology

We are blaming it on the virus. But it seems, in hindsight, as if we were anticipating this moment in time, when we could be forced to withdraw from other fellow beings. The proof is the technologies and devices we invented. On the surface, they may have seemed to be about more sociability, but it was always harbouring its invisible other, the asociability of it all.
Curated By: Madhu Kapparath
Published: May 22, 2021
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Image by : KWIYEON HA / REUTERS

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VIRTUAL WIFE, JAPAN 

Akihiko Kondo (35), a Tokyo school administrator, poses for a photograph with a doll modelled after VR singer Hatsune Miku at his apartment, wearing their wedding rings after marrying her hologram in Tokyo. Akihiko’s mother refused an invitation to her only son’s wedding. Gatebox, the company that produces the hologram device featuring Miku, has issued a ‘marriage certificate’, which certifies that a human and a virtual character have wed ‘beyond dimensions’