I am now, in note form, going to argue against so much of what I have written, and it may not be clear what I am trying to capture, but I guess that is what blogging is for.

Places in themselves don’t exist, we act as if they do, so they have an effect on us as if they virtually are substances, environments, spatial identities etc.

But really the notion of place is so vague and ephemeral and confusing that it is fascinating how we can be affected by the place (rather than directly what it is made from) as if virtually it was a causal power.

Now philosophers, Duns Scotus, Peirce, Bergson, Deleuze, etc, may have different notions of virtuality. So I will have to address that. But be that as it may, what is important here is if place itself is a kind of virtuality, then how can we have virtual places? That would be a virtually virtual collection of phenomena experienced as a phenomenon..

When we say virtual places we conflate 3D digital environments with “virtual place”, with the implication that it is also immersive. So we conflate the technological requirements (digital, 3D, persistent, quasi-interactive) with the experientially immersive (the successful experience of ‘being there’).

• Joseph L. Esposito, Virtuality
• Peter Skagestad, Peirce, Virtuality, and Semiotic
• Henri Bergson, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/
• Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Post-Contemporary Interventions, Durham and London: Duke University Press.