Judging from the success of storytelling, exploring new worlds seems to be a constantly exciting endeavour, a task real heroes would perform. Nowadays there is a nostalgic veil around the discovery of the unknown, since our planet has become known and banal, in a way. There is no place we couldn’t get to in a couple of days’ journey. Everything is mapped, described, explored. It seems that being a discoverer is a .
Exploring our galaxy, as tempting as it may sound, is far away from being entirely possible. We are still stuck on this boring planet, for a couple of decades at least. But lucky for us who are dwelling here, the universe offers far more than the eye can see.
You don’t need to look outside to find something new. Many years ago people found out that we can go internally to explore the unknown. There are for instance Psychonauts who explore the inner psych through psychedelics. They discover the realm of the psychic mind, and they have found many reasures. Then there are Oneironauts, a profession less heard of, who explore the dreaming state through lucid dreaming. They discovered the realm of the dreamer. Does it look different for everybody? You have to go look for yourself to find out, I guess.
Now, since we are here to talk about virtual reality, I think it would be more than just to come up for a term describing people exploring the realm of the virtual for we have no clue how wide its boarders go – and if there are any at all. Using the same greek terminology which was used in the aforementioned cases, we find that the virtual realm is called „eikonikó“. So the most suitable name for us, the people who explore the virtual reality, would be „Eikonaut“.