The term virtual comes from the medieval Latin Virtuale or Virtualis, whose root Virtus was retained and means: virtue, strength or power.

How do I understand the virtual?

In his seminal work, What is the Virtual ?, Pierre Lévy defines the virtual in a clear and revealing way.

Lévy classifies the opposition between real and virtual as "easy and misleading," arguing that the virtual , in fact, opposes the actual, insofar as it tends to actualize itself without achieving effective realization. Furthermore, he states that the virtual is distinguished from the possible, insofar as the latter is already constituted, existing only in a latent state, ready to transform into the real.

In this way, the virtual takes on the condition of something that provides the tensions for the creative process that involves updating, not being something predictable and static, like the passage from the possible to the real.

The virtual takes the place of meaning , of a generating matrix, in opposition to the particular actualization of the signifier, or the actual. Lévy also compares the virtual to a "motor void" and from this, works with the concept of the virtual, qualifying it as one of its main modalities, that is, the detachment from the here and now.

Virtualization expands the variability of spaces and temporalities, while new means of communication establish diversified modalities of time and space that differentiate those involved from each other and also from those outside the new system. This attribution of value based on differences is applied by Lévy to the process of virtualization. For him, the expansion of communication and speed share the "tension of leaving a presence".

There are various types of virtualization, such as the virtualization of text, action, the present, violence, the body, among others. Virtualization has always been present in our lives, and it influences many aspects, especially regarding the evolution of the human species.