Participatory "worlds," tactile feedback, and the liberation of the body from the constraints of material imagination pinpoint a significant problem in the depiction of an authentic representation of a reality in any substantive sense. As Jacques Lacan expressed it, the Real is that which is unrepresentable. As the system of technology expands to dominate the regulation of the external world, it also contracts and increasingly penetrates the internal world. The body is unquestionably the next frontier -- the body, and then cognition.

The penetration of technology within the body, and the socialization of simulated realities are more than signifiers of technological progress. They mark a radical transformation of the social order in which knowledge is linked with ideology, biology, or identity in terms of a technological imperative not fundamentally connected with necessity.

Information has become the lubricant for a swiftly emerging social structure that is wholly dependent on the potential, malleability, and exchangeability of data.