How do music and medical science relate? It's easy! Even before the time when virtual reality was cool and accessible, people like Aleksandr Porfir'evich Borodin (a nineteenth century Russian musician/physician) combined music and medicine while actively crusading for women's rights in Russian medical education. Today, Psychiatrist Denny Zeitlin has a private practice in San Francisco and has published numerous albums of very fine jazz music. He played at the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Trident in Sausalito long before he finished medical training.

DR TOMORROW is the name of both a rock group and a health and wellness program aimed at the interactive CD market. How does virtual virtual reality come in to all of this? Checking out the cyber-scifi writings of William Gibson or Neal Stephenson gives us a glimmer. It's like being "jacked in" to virtual reality but somehow transcending even that level. In strictly mathematical terms, Virtual Virtual Reality (VVR) relates to Virtual Reality (VR) in the same way that a second derivative of a mathematical function relates to the first derivative. In psychological terms, VVR is somewhat akin to a dream of a dream. Or having a dream while dreaming. But math is still a better way of understanding VVR. Goedel's Virtually Incomplete Theorem proved that any reality sufficiently complex to be interesting cannot be _completely_ virtual. This is a sort of inverse to the virtual virtual problem.

GOEDEL'S VIRTUALLY INCOMPLETE THEOREM (articulated by Steven Boker, Midwestern Psychology Professor) states that if virtual virtual reality is like the derivative of virtual reality, then real virtual reality is like the integral of virtual reality. Any sufficiently complex reality must be able to include the description of both the virtual of itself and the real of itself. Thus any virtual reality contains within it a version of its own real reality, thus it is not _completely_ virtual. Although some might take Dr. Boker's conclusions to suggest that VVR and VR are insufficient or incomplete ideas, this does not devalue the usefulness of VR and VVR. The truth is that this incompleteness is in and of itself a defining characteristic of both virtual and virtualvirtual reality. And this degree of incompleteness or a _quality_ of incompleteness is what permits the human part of the equation . Human interventions within VR and VVR take place during these moments or locations of "incompleteness" or "virtual vacuoles," which are four-dimensional in nature and represent empty places in the time/space continuum..

An easier way to understand "the virtual of a virtual" concept might be to check out one portrayal in the story, DR TOMORROW, which has been serialized and electronically published in

the eZine, (electronic magazine), QUANTA.

The novel was published in five parts, which can also be linked directly.

DR TOMORROW Part 1
DR TOMORROW Part 2
DR TOMORROW Part 3
DR TOMORROW Part 4
DR TOMORROW Part 5