Ch 1 Preview 
OUR DREAMS

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​​​​If I asked you what it means to be human, what would you say? Are we human because we feel? Are we human because we're self-aware? Are we less human if we can’t force some emotions into existence? Why do we ache for purpose? What do you think? 

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In the classic novel Fahrenheit 451, late one night, a man by the name of Guy Montag is out walking when he stumbles into a young girl. He helps her get home, but the ensuing conversation chills him to the bone. She asks him some questions. Remarkably penetrating questions. Startled as much by their simplicity as the reality that he’s never even once considered them, he becomes unnerved. She asks him why he laughs and answers her questions without really pausing to think about them. She asks him if he thinks it’s sad that people drive so fast every day, they don’t even know what it is they’re driving past. She asks him about the man on the moon, and then he realizes he hasn't looked at the moon in a very long time. And then she says something even stranger: her family doesn't watch television. Instead, they sit together and talk almost every night. He's shocked that they’re not glued to a screen, and asks:

 

“What do you talk about?” 

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As she walks up to her door, she turns around, then comes back, and asks him one final question:

 

“Are you happy?” 

 

Taken aback, he replies, "Am I what?" After returning home, he can't stop thinking, stop obsessing about the questions. Is he happy? He's sitting alone in the darkness of his room when it finally dawns on him that something is terribly wrong. He realizes that he is in fact sad, and that this is the “true state of affairs.” He knows that something is off, something is missing, but he can’t identify what that something is. The more he thinks about it, the more he realizes he can’t be the only one who feels this way. He can’t be alone. And so, he sets off to finally discover what is wrong and what it means to be human. But not before he walks into a room where his wife sits, and describes her thus:

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“Her face was like a snow-covered island upon which rain might fall, but it felt no rain; over which clouds might pass their moving shadows, but she felt no shadow. There was only the singing of the thimble-wasps in her tamped-shut ears, and her eyes all glass, and breath going in and out, softly, faintly, in and out her nostrils, and her not caring whether it came or went, went or came.”

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​​She was breathing but never appreciated it. She was laughing but without real joy. Essentially, she was alive but never truly living. Like Guy, she too was sad but filled it with incessant digital distraction. They both reside in a society which encourages digital dependence as an escape from community conflict and human suffering. One might think the novel was written today given its depictions of virtual lives and selling one’s soul to a screen, but Fahrenheit 451 was written on a humble typewriter in 1953. Believe it or not, this story is our story. The more we invest in a shallow virtual reality, the less equipped we are for the depth of the people around us. The more we use social media, the less social we actually are. The more we connect to a digital device, the less connected we are to human beings. The greater technology’s power, the less empowered humanity becomes. How many late-night conversations have I missed because I didn’t unplug? How many fears, confessions, and dreams could I have shared with another human being if I discarded that device? Prince EA, hip-hop musician and social commentator, writes on this very phenomenon:

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 Social apps are often anti-social because they’re self-aggrandizement under a mask of socializing. What is emphasized in social media is not an organic social structure but an audience. An audience that exists for the product, which is me. An audience I can tune and adjust. And if the audience exists for my image, my accomplishments, and opinions, then we replace collective community with individual stages, stages which exists to outperform other people. All of us should pursue change that betters the human race, but like the young girl in Fahrenheit 451 alluded to, are we moving so fast that we’re losing meaningful progress? When the American Psychological Association and Surgeon General issue nationwide alarm bells of skyrocketing suicide rates due to digital addictions on Tik Tok and Snapchat, is that forward momentum? When the average eleven-year-old spends nine hours on a screen per day, is that proactive parenting or disengaged cultural assimilation? When scores of parents allow teen girls instantaneous, 24/7 access to strangers via Omegle video chats, should we classify that app as socially progressive? When singles assess people like online grocery pickups, swiping their human products left or right on a screen in dating apps like Tinder, how much relational depth is disposed? When we tell our creative writing students that AI-generated papers are wrong, but simultaneously allow our journalists to churn out ChatGPT content in the name of productivity, what kind of examples are we setting? How much creativity and human fulfillment is affected? Are we even aware of the dangers? Or have we been lulled to sleep?

 

A Recurring Dream

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Have you ever dreamed that you’re falling, and woken up with a start? Have you ever dreamed that you have to move and run, but you’re trapped by fear? Dreams are complex and have many underlying causes. Sometimes they’re just random firings of the brain. Sometimes they represent our fears. Just like history repeating itself, sometimes repetition is a powerful revealer. Sometimes daydreams even reveal our desires.

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A friend of mine once described one of his dreams that terrified him personally. In the dream, he walked into a prison. But this was no ordinary prison. The jail cell was a lavish career opportunity. While it paid exceedingly well, it didn’t match his talents and gifts. It wasn’t the career his heart dreamed and longed for. And years later, though this nightmare alarmed his soul, he pursued the very career his desires were so afraid of. I’ve often wondered why. Did he run from his true passion in exchange for the paycheck? I’ll never know. But don’t many of us do the same? Don’t we forsake our desires and dreams for security or societal affirmation? Sometimes I feel like we’re actually living the very dream we don’t like. It’s the same scenes, the same conflict, and we toss and turn throughout a nightmarish existence. The alarm is going off, but we’re stuck and can’t wake up. In our life’s story the conflict and mystery remains unsolved. 

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Stories and dreams are remarkably similar. In an unexpected way, the storyteller uses fiction to wake us up to a reality we’re accustomed to looking away from. And because we’re sometimes sleepwalking, these are stories we mustn’t neglect, for they’re closer to our waking moments, our real lives, than we often suspect. Story after story, technology becomes an unexpected teacher of human nature. George Orwell’s 1984 perfectly mirrors present-day digital dictatorships in totalitarian countries across the world. One of the great tragedies of millennials is the loss of deep connection because we’re always connected to something digital, and in Tron: Legacy, a father is trapped in a virtual reality of his own making and loses an entire lifetime with his only, most precious son in the process. Isaac Asimov discussed the unhealthy dependency and complexity of powerful code in his seminal tale on artificial intelligence. We are warned that machines will:

 

“...one day have secrets. One day they’ll have dreams.”

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So what is it we’re heading towards? A final crescendo or a terrible crash? To answer this question, we must know why human beings often rise and fall. We must examine what we are climbing toward and why.

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An AI Encounter

 

Have you ever been hounded by so much noise and distraction that it haunts your dreams? As a millennial, I don’t mind noise when the sun hangs in the sky, but when it’s three a.m. and I can’t sleep because my thoughts are racing louder than a locomotive, that’s when I get up and stumble into my living room. Sometimes I pray. Sometimes I read. But on this strange night, I did something I should not have done. Little did I know this one decision would keep me awake long into the morning. Instead of counting sheep, or reading to relax my mind, I decided to open up my laptop... END PREVIEW

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A page turner from the start, Our Virtual Reality offers tales of love, hope, and practical tools to thrive in the age of immersive technologies.

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Jonathan Runyan is a senior cyber security engineer and former pastor writing on the intersection of spiritual and virtual reality. You can read more about him here.

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