Every Medium Creates a "Reality"

Every medium creates it's own "reality". A different combination of senses are required for every medium and consequently a new "reality" is created. If you're reading a book, you are staring at the printed page and the sequence of words are triggering images and scenes which play out across the stage of your imagination to tell the story. This is the "reality" of reading. If you're watching a movie, you're in a darkened theater staring at a silver screen where a sequence of still images are being superimposed to create a "moving" image coordinated with matching sounds. This is the "reality" of movies. It is interesting to compare the "reality" of movies with the "reality" of the stage. With the stage, the movements and sounds are created in "real" time whereas, in movies, both the movements and sounds are created separately and artifically and then combined. Both movies and the stage are combined visual/auditory "realities". When interfacing with television, you are staring at a pixel-filled screen and controlling the output on the screen with a remote. As with film, the sequence of "moving" images is coordinated with matching sounds. But again, television has its own "reality"; you are viewing the screen in your home and the concommitant activities in the home (sounds of kids, dogs, wives etc.) are competing with the sounds/images from the television for your attention. Hence, television has its own "reality". Clothing as a medium (extensions of the skin) has it's own "reality". When you put on fresh clothes, you feel different and see the world differently. When in your "Sunday best", you feel different than when you are in your grungy jeans and tee shirt. Each set of clothes creates its own "reality" because each engages the tactile sense in a different way. When you're driving your car, you have still another "reality", but this medium requires more senses that television, movies, the stage etc. Your hands (tactile) are on the wheel, your eyes (visual) are staring at the road ahead, your ears (auditory) are listening for sounds from adjacent traffic; your nose (olfactory) is attentive for input from the car (burning rubber, engine smells) and other signs of possible danger from surrounding traffic. It is safe to say that, since more senses are involved, driving a car is a more intense "reality" than most of the others. The computer interface represents still another "reality". In this interface, rather than staring through a windshield and gripping a steering wheel, you are staring at a monitor screen and manipulating the images and data within that screen with a mouse and keyboard. It is interesting to examine how, when media are combined, new "realities" are created. Consider the amalgamation of silent film with a sound track (radio, so to speak) to produce "talkies". The silent film had its own "reality". It engaged the visual sense (primarily) and the auditory sense within certain limits. The radio "reality", however,  was primarily auditory in nature. As with books and magazines, you followed the story in your imagination. With books, the input into the imagination was primarily visual. With radio, the input into the imagination was primarily auditory. Thus, when "talkies" came along in 1929, an incredible new "reality" was created since it engaged the visual and auditory senses at a totally new level. The list of media and the special "realities" each creates goes on and on, but overall, it's safe to say that the basis for each of those "realities" is relative to the senses the medium engages.