Justin Williams takes off a virtual-reality (VR) headset and wobbles away from a demo. The bottoms of his feet and calves are “on fire,” he says. Mr. Williams was playing “Sprint Vector”, a VR running game: players swing hand-held controllers to simulate motion. Though he has been standing in one place, his brain believes he has just run for several miles.

This sensation of complete immersion is called “presence”. Boosters of VR say it is what will drive the technology’s mass adoption, in time. When Facebook bought Oculus, a VR startup, for $2bn in 2014, and sent interest in the technology rocketing, it was this feeling of being present that Mark Zuckerberg, described as “incredible”.

Several obstacles still stand in the way of widespread use. The gear is expensive and clunky, and requires a powerful computer or gaming console to function. Consumers are hesitant to splash out on expensive kit when there isn’t a lot to do with it; developers are reluctant to spend resources making games for a tiny market. The way in which users must wave around hand-held controllers to input movements falls short of the promise of VR, which will eventually use sensors to convey bodily movement.

Some tech giants still see VR as integral to their future. Facebook is convinced that VR is “the next major computing platform”. It has a new offering, “Spaces”, which is a place to socialize with friends in VR that allows users to create avatars, to express some emotion through facial expressions, answer video calls, share photos and take selfies. As a first go, it is surprisingly compelling.

If VR is to take off at last, tech-industry executives agree that avid gamers will be crucial. Such people tend to be early adopters of expensive new equipment, so they subsidize innovation. Games developers know how to engage players and keep them interested, and how to tell stories in a non-linear fashion. And they have for years created content in three dimensions, a basic requirement for VR. Indeed, virtual reality is integrating games and the broader technology industry as never before. “It’s like two continents that were apart, and continental drift is bringing them together,” says Neil Trevett of the Khronos Group, a non-profit industry group.

Virtual reality also has new functions in business and beyond. VR producer says it receives many inquiries from carmakers, for example, which are using VR as a way quickly and cheaply to prototype and collaborate on new models of vehicles. Hospitals in America are experimenting with 3D models in VR as a way for doctors to get a closer look at tricky bits of bodies or to prep for surgery. The VR industry has not yet fulfilled the hype. But the believers have not lost their faith.

The 20th-century philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer considered the encounter between the viewer and a work of art to be a dynamic relationship. Meeting a work of art made in the past involves a jolt, a reaction, an actual event, in the present. Coming across the same work of art later will set up another event, another reaction, in which the artwork will be, as it were, activated afresh by the intellect and emotions of the viewer. When we interpret a work of art, we are teasing out its possible meanings in the moment; but those meanings will change, depending on the viewer and the time.

Extend this thought into the world of the museum and it becomes clear that these institutions are not simply about the past. They are, necessarily, about the present. Paintings, sculptures, artefacts of all kinds become meaningful in the “now” of their being viewed and considered. They shape us as we excavate new depths from them.

In a more purely functional manner, museums are increasingly embracing their capacity to be actors in the present worlds of their communities—rather than simply repositories of things of the past, and gatherers and protectors of collective memories. Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum, notes along the way that nostalgia is a danger for some of these institutions: there can be a temptation for them to become containers of “loss and longing”, especially when part of their founding impulse may have been, understandably and rightly, to preserve what was on the verge of being erased— whether preindustrial ways of life or, in the post-Thatcher age, manufacturing cultures.

Something intriguing can happen when the drift to nostalgia is resisted. An example is Derby’s new Museum of Making, which both salutes the city’s history of manufacturing and aims to foster skills and inspire new acts of ingenuity. That in itself is nothing new, of course: part of the purpose of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London was to encourage innovation in design and manufacturing. But the Museum of Making takes things a step further—hosting, for example, sessions for teachers and educators on fostering environments conducive to creativity, and “maker challenges” for teenagers. In so doing, it bridges the gap between museum and educational institution and inserts itself more fully into the fabric—and future—of the city.

It is a welcome shift. Museums, often in the teeth of terrible loss of income, are increasingly becoming ethical actors, as heavily invested in conversations about the kind of places communities want to be as what they once were. It should go without saying that they need to be properly supported to do this, by the government, local authorities and donors.

In June 1956 a TWA Constellation collided with a United Air Lines DC-7 over the Grand Canyon in Arizona, killing all 128 people on both aircraft. At the time it was the worst ever airline disaster. Struggling with outdated technology and a post-war boom in air travel, overworked air-traffic controllers failed to spot that the planes were on a collision course.

That crash led to the creation of a new body, which became the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), in charge of running and modernizing the world’s biggest airtransport system. With that system again struggling to keep pace with demand, Donald Trump thinks it is time to privatize America’s air-traffic control service. In June the president outlined a plan to turn air-traffic control into a separate non-profit entity financed by user fees, instead of the present patchwork of taxes and grants. Shorn of its air-traffic responsibility, the FAA would become a safety body.

America’s air-traffic system is vast, consisting of 14,000 controllers working in 476 airport-control towers that handle take-offs and landings, as well as in 21 “en route” centers looking after flights along the nation’s airways. It has a good safety record, but elderly technology limits the number of flights that can be handled. This leads to delays and frustrated flyers. With passenger numbers set to grow from 800m a year to almost 1bn by 2026, the problem will only get worse.

Mr. Trump believes that, no longer mired in a federal bureaucracy, the air-traffic service will become more efficient and better able to invest in technology. Replacing old radar-based methods with accurate satellite navigation and better digital communications is a particular priority. Aircraft using satellite navigation can be safely spaced more closely together, which permits many more planes to be in the air at the same time. Digital systems also provide data links to control centers and to other planes by regularly broadcasting an aircraft’s identification sign, its position and course. This would allow “free routing”, which means pilots can fly directly to a destination, rather than follow established airways, which often zigzag around.

The president’s proposal might even speed a move towards “virtual” control towers in low-rise buildings, which can replace towers physically located at airports. The virtual versions are fed live video from airfield cameras. Proponents argue that they are both safer and around 30% cheaper to operate. Virtual towers can look after more than one airport.

Mr. Trump, though, may struggle to get the proposal through Congress. A similar plan got stuck last year, despite being backed by most airlines and the air-traffic controllers’ union. At least the president can dodge the queues: Air Force One flights get special clearance.

In the early days of the Internet, the idea that it represented an entirely new and separate realm, distinct from the real world, was seized upon by both advocates and critics of the new technology. Advocates liked the idea that the virtual world was a placeless datasphere, liberated from constraints and restrictions of the real world, and an opportunity for a fresh start. This view was expressed most clearly in the “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” issued by John Perry Barlow, an internet activist, in February 1996. “Governments of the industrial world, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from cyberspace, the new home of mind,” he thundered. “Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Our world is different. We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.”

Where Mr. Barlow and other cyber-Utopians found the separation between the real and virtual worlds exciting, however, critics regarded it as a cause for concern. They worried that people were spending too much time online, communing with people they had never even met in person in chat rooms, virtual game worlds and, more recently, on social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. A study carried out by the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society in 2000, for example, found that heavy internet users spent less time talking to friends and family, and warned that the internet could be “the ultimate isolating technology”.

Both groups were wrong, of course. The internet has not turned out to be a thing apart. Unpleasant aspects of the real world, such as taxes, censorship, crime and fraud are now features of the virtual world, too. Gamers who make real money selling swords, gold and other items in virtual game worlds may now find that the tax man wants to know about it. Designers of virtual objects in Second Life, an online virtual world, are resorting to real-world lawsuits in order to protect their intellectual property. And several countries have managed to impose physical borders on the internet to enforce local laws.

At the same time, however, some of the most exciting uses of the internet rely on coupling it with the real world. Social networking allows people to stay in touch with their friends online, and plan social activities in the real world. The distinction between online and offline chatter ceases to matter. Or consider Google Earth, which puts satellite images of the whole world on your desktop and allows users to link online data with specific physical locations. The next step is to call up information about your surroundings using mobile devices—something that is starting to become possible. Beyond that, “augmented reality” technology blends virtual objects seamlessly into views of the real world, making it possible to compare real buildings with their virtual blueprints, or tag real-world locations with virtual messages.

All these approaches treat the internet as an overlay or an adjunct to the physical world, not a separate space. Rather than seeing the real and virtual realms as distinct and conflicting, in short, it makes sense to see them as complementary and connected. The resulting fusion is not what the Utopians or the critics foresaw, but it suits the rest of us just fine.

In the world of entertainment, TV talk shows have undoubtedly flooded every inch of space on daytime television. And anyone who watches them regularly knows that each one varies in style and format. But no two shows are more profoundly opposite in content, while at the same time standing out above the rest, than the Jerry Springer and the Oprah Winfrey shows.

Jerry Springer could easily be considered the king of “trash talk (废话)”. The topics on his show are as shocking as shocking can be. For example, the show takes the ever common talk show themes of love, sex, cheating, guilt, hate, conflict and morality to a different level. Clearly, the Jerry Springer show is a display and exploitation of society’s moral catastrophes, yet people are willing to eat up the intriguing predicaments (困境) of other people’s lives.

Like Jerry Springer, Oprah Winfrey takes TV talk show to its extreme, but Oprah goes in the opposite direction. The show focuses on the improvement of society and an individual’s quality of life. Topics range from teaching your children responsibility, managing your work week, to getting to know your neighbors.

Compared to Oprah, the Jerry Springer show looks like poisonous waste being dumped on society. Jerry ends every show with a final word. He makes a small speech that sums up the entire moral of the show. Hopefully, this is the part where most people will learn something very valuable.

Clean as it is, the Oprah show is not for everyone. The show’s main target audience are middle-class Americans. Most of these people have the time, money, and stability to deal with life’s tougher problems. Jerry Springer, on the other hand, has more of an association with the young adults of society. These are 18- to 21-year-olds whose main troubles in life involve love, relationship, sex, money and peers. They are the ones who see some value and lessons to be learned underneath the show’s exploitation.

While the two shows are as different as night and day, both have ruled the talk show circuit for many years now. Each one caters to a different audience while both have a strong following from large groups of fans. Ironically, both could also be considered pioneers in the talk show world.