NONFICTION - Aug. 13, 1995

WAR OF THE WORLDS: Cyberspace and the Hi-Tech Assault on Reality by Mark Slouka (Basic Books: $20; 208 pp.). Commodification is a dirty word these days, being the child of Marxist thought. Mark Slouka puts the concept to good use in this polemic, though, for it’s one of the more effective arguments he makes against the current vogue for virtual reality. Slouka, a lecturer on popular culture at UC San Diego, is concerned above all that cyberspace blurs the distinction between the real and the counterfeit: that the ability to “fake” reality on-line--and the concomitant tendencies to devalue the physical world, condone the invention of false identities, and generally encourage “hive behavior”--isn’t necessarily a good thing. What should we make of a culture and a medium that seems to prefer replications--of art, of conversation, of sex--to their real-world counterparts? That boasts of “connection” while simultaneously sanctioning physical isolation and personal anonymity? As for commodification, it’s everywhere: in the networked world we must pay for the kind of communication we previously enjoyed for nothing, become subject to the new technology’s limits, structures, assumptions, authorities. Slouka overstates his case at times--the distinction between the real and the virtual isn’t going to vanish any time soon--but it’s also true that cyberspace’s ability to replicate the physical world will lead to a pervasive, profound uneasiness concerning the nature of reality. If there really is a war of the worlds in the offing, it’s frighteningly easy to imagine, given the cybernauts’ mimetic ability, that you might end up working for the wrong side.