Virtual Reality And The Exploration Of Cyberspace

Virtual Reality and the Exploration of Cyberspace is an introduction that covers not only the nuts and bolts of this emerging technology but also seeks to provide context by examining the social, political, and business implications of virtual reality. The two disks include virtual reality shareware and demos.

The digital story from the early days of computers to virtual reality and the world wide web is told in this exciting new book. The life-saving applications of computer simulation in flight, battle and hazardous environments are explored as are computer arts in the fields of film, graphic arts, and games and entertainment.

Virtual Reality: Applications and Explorations provides information pertinent to the fundamental aspects of virtual reality and artificial reality. This book discusses the potential applications of virtual reality. Organized into three parts encompassing 10 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the traditional computer science activities ad discusses how hard problems in computer science can be addressed with virtual reality ideas and technology. This text then explores some applications of virtual reality technology that could potentially touch almost every purposeful activity that humans undertake in a technological civilization. Other chapters consider the use of virtual reality to manage and present to users information that cannot otherwise be comprehended. This book discusses as well the use of artificial worlds in both computer art and virtual reality. The final chapter deals with how the ideas of virtual reality and artificial reality can be of use to anyone who has to manage a business or organization. This book is a valuable resource for computer scientists.

Containing the edited research papers resulting from an ambitious, cross-disciplinary research project, this volume examines the spatiality of virtual inhabited 3D worlds - virtual reality and cyberspace. (Three other volumes look at Interaction, Staging and Methodology.) It is about the communication spaces emerging at the Internet and supported by special 3D interfaces. It is also about the virtual spaces created by virtual reality hardware (CAVEs, panoramic screens, head mounted display systems etc.) and software. Virtual Space: Spatiality in Virtual Inhabited 3D Worlds is interdisciplinary. It deals with philosophical, psychological, communicational, technological and aesthetic aspects of space. While philosophy raises the question concerning the ontology of space - what is space - psychology deals with our perception of space. Communication theory looks at the way in which space supports communication (i.e. that space is a medium for communication), and finally aesthetic analyses exemplify the use of virtual space in virtual cities, in museums and in art.

It is commonplace in our digitized world to think that technology is the primary agent of psychological and social change. In Interactive Realism Daniel Downes argues that it continues to be people who construct social reality through their interactions, critiquing the "tranformative turn" in media studies. Distinguishing between the Internet, a communication system, and cyberspace, an environment for human exchange, the author provides a framework for exploring the metaphors and images used in cyberspace to represent and model social reality. He clarifies how these symbolic interactions are linked to the technologies used to create, store, and transmit them and to their social context. Drawing on examples from digital games, web design, film, and photography, the author shows how individual experiences are calibrated by technology and how digital communication contributes to broader processes such as community building and public memory. Downes articulates a nuanced form of media ecology that does not focus on a single cause of change but rather on the relationships between embodied experience, communication systems, and representations. Interactive Realism establishes a new method for understanding the importance of digital media to the construction of social reality.

The emergence of the hominids, more than five million years ago, marked the start of the human odyssey through space and time. This book deals with the last stage of this fascinating journey: the exploration of cyberspace and cybertime. Through the rapid global implementation of information and communication technologies, a new realm for human experience and imagination has been disclosed. Reversely, these postgeographical and posthistorical technologies have started to colonize our bodies and minds. Taking Homer’s Odyssey and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey as his starting point, the author investigates the ‘informatization of the worldview’, focusing on its implications for our culture–arts, religion, and science–and, ultimately, our form of life. Moving across a wide range of disciplines, varying from philosophical anthropology and palaeontology to information theory, and from astrophysics to literary, film and new media studies, the author discusses our ‘cyberspace odyssey’ from a reflective position beyond euphoria and nostalgia. His analysis is as profound as nuanced and deals with issues that will be high on the agenda for many decades to come. In 2003 a Dutch Edition of Cyberspace Odyssey received the Socrates Prize for the best philosophy book published in Dutch.

Here is the first integrated approach to the design of virtual environments. Through examples of the pioneering work of designers from all over the world, this innovative guide shows architects, designers, and programmers how to create the landmarks and context of cyberspace--and possibilities in this field for the future. 105 illustrations, 30 in color.

Cyberspace, a term first coined by the writer William Gibson in his award-winning 1984 novel Neuromancer, has been described as an infinite artificial world where humans navigate in information-based space and as the ultimate computer-human interface. However one defines it, the virtual reality known as cyberspace is one of the most radically innovative of computer developments. These original contributions by leading thinkers in computer science, architecture, the visual arts, philosophy, anthropology, and industry, provide an insider's view of this new technology. Cyberspace - First Steps focuses on the theoretical and conceptual issues involved in the design, use, and effects of virtual environments, offering fictions, predictions, and proposals, forming a collective search for appropriate metaphors and possible structures that might provide the basis for future virtual worlds.