Virtuality And Humanity

This is a pioneering study of virtuality through human history: ancient-to-modern evolution and recent expansion; expression in many fields (chapters on Religion; Philosophy, Math, Physics; Literature and the Arts; Economics; Nationhood, Government and War; Communication); psychological and social reasons for its universality; inter-relationship with "reality." The book's thesis: virtuality was always an integral part of humanity in many areas of life, generally expanding over the ages. The reasons: 1- brain psychology; 2- virtuality's six functions — escape from boredom to relieving existential dread. Other questions addressed: How will future neuroscience, biotech and "compunications" affect virtuality? Can/should there be limits to human virtualizing?

This is a pioneering study of virtuality through human history: ancient-to-modern evolution and recent expansion; expression in many fields (chapters on Religion; Philosophy, Math, Physics; Literature and the Arts; Economics; Nationhood, Government and War; Communication); psychological and social reasons for its universality; inter-relationship with "reality." The book's thesis: virtuality was always an integral part of humanity in many areas of life, generally expanding over the ages. The reasons: 1- brain psychology; 2- virtuality's six functions — escape from boredom to relieving existential dread. Other questions addressed: How will future neuroscience, biotech and "compunications" affect virtuality? Can/should there be limits to human virtualizing?

Winner of the Gradiva® Best Book Award 2022, and the Courage to Dream Book Prize 2023 from the Academy of the American Psychoanalytic Association! This book is a psychoanalytic and philosophical exploration of how the digital is transforming our perception of the world and our understanding of ourselves. Drawing on examples from everyday life, myth, and popular culture, this book argues that virtual reality is only the latest instantiation of the phenomenon of the virtual, which is intrinsic to human being. It illuminates what is at stake in our understanding of the relationship between the virtual and the real, showing how our present technologies both enhance and diminish our psychological lives. The authors claim that technology is a pharmakon - at the same time both a remedy and a poison - and in their writing exemplify a method that overcomes the polarization that compels us to regard it either as a liberating force or a dangerous threat in human life. The digital revolution challenges us to reckon with the implications of what is being called our posthuman condition, leaving behind our modern conception of the world as constituted by atemporal essences and reconceiving it instead as one of processes and change. The book’s postscript considers the sudden plunge into the virtual effected by the 2020 global pandemic. Accessible and wide-reaching, this book will appeal not only to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and philosophers, but anyone interested in the ways virtuality and the digital are transforming our contemporary lives.

Is virtual reality the latest grand narrative that humanity has produced? This book attempts to disentangle the common characteristics of human reality and posthuman virtual reality by examining discourses on psychoanalysis, gene-technology, globalization, and contemporary art.

The book is a compendium of thinking on virtuality and its relationship to reality from the perspective of a variety of philosophical and applied fields of study. Topics covered include presence, immersion, emotion, ethics, utopias and dystopias, image, sound, literature, AI, law, economics, medical and military applications, religion, and sex.

Virtual reality (VR) potentially provides our minds with direct access to digital media in a way that at first seems to have no limits.However, creating compelling VR experiences is an incredibly complex challenge.When VR is done well, the results are brilliant and pleasurable experiences that go beyond what we can do in the real world.When VR is done badly, not only is the system frustrating to use, but sickness can result.Reasons for bad VR are numerous; some failures come from the limitations of technology, but many come from a lack of understanding perception, interaction, design principles, and real users. This book discusses such issues, focusing upon the human element of VR rather than technical implementation, for if we do not get the human element correct, then no amount of technology will make VR anything more than an interesting tool confined to research laboratories. Even when VR principles are fully understood, first implementations are rarely novel and never ideal due to the complex nature of VR and the countless possibilities. However, the VR principles discussed within enable us to intelligently experiment with the rules and iteratively design towards innovative experiences.

This book presents a collection of the latest research in the area of immersive technologies, presented at the International Augmented and Virtual Reality Conference 2018 in Manchester, UK, and showcases how augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are transforming the business landscape. Innovations in this field are seen as providing opportunities for businesses to offer their customers unique services and experiences. The papers gathered here advance the state of the art in AR/VR technologies and their applications in various industries such as healthcare, tourism, hospitality, events, fashion, entertainment, retail, education and gaming. The volume collects contributions by prominent computer and social sciences experts from around the globe. Addressing the most significant topics in the field of augmented and virtual reality and sharing the latest findings, it will be of interest to academics and practitioners alike.

In this age of DNA computers and artificial intelligence, information is becoming disembodied even as the "bodies" that once carried it vanish into virtuality. While some marvel at these changes, envisioning consciousness downloaded into a computer or humans "beamed" Star Trek-style, others view them with horror, seeing monsters brooding in the machines. In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles separates hype from fact, investigating the fate of embodiment in an information age. Hayles relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms that carry it; the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist "subject" in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the "posthuman." Ranging widely across the history of technology, cultural studies, and literary criticism, Hayles shows what had to be erased, forgotten, and elided to conceive of information as a disembodied entity. Thus she moves from the post-World War II Macy Conferences on cybernetics to the 1952 novel Limbo by cybernetics aficionado Bernard Wolfe; from the concept of self-making to Philip K. Dick's literary explorations of hallucination and reality; and from artificial life to postmodern novels exploring the implications of seeing humans as cybernetic systems. Although becoming posthuman can be nightmarish, Hayles shows how it can also be liberating. From the birth of cybernetics to artificial life, How We Became Posthuman provides an indispensable account of how we arrived in our virtual age, and of where we might go from here.