The idea of virtual realities has a long and complex historical trajectory, spanning from Plato's concept of the cave and the simulacrum, to artistic styles such as Trompe L'oeil, and more recently developments in 3D film, television and gaming. However, this book will pay particular attention to the time between the 1980s to the 1990s when virtual reality and cyberspace were represented, particularly in fiction, as a wondrous technology that enabled transcendence from the limitations of physical embodiment. The purpose of this critical historical analysis of representations of virtual reality is to examine how they might deny, repress or overlook embodied experience. Specifically, the author will contend that embodiment is a fundamental aspect of immersion in virtual reality, rather than something which is to be transcended. In this way, the book aims to challenge distorted ideas about transcendence and productively contribute to debates about embodiment and technology.

An easy-to-use guide, filled with tutorials that will teach you how to set up and use iCloud, and profit from all of its marvellous features. This book is for anyone with basic knowledge of computers and mobile operations. Prior knowledge of cloud computing or iCloud is not expected.

How much time does your organization waste in unfocused, unengaging and unproductive virtual meetings?

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Drag those windows from your screen and into the air in front of you. Use a simple glance to switch lights, open doors or surf the web. Virtual devices, virtual objects will surround us, anywhere. Only one piece of real hardware will do it all, replace anything. From application concepts to technical design to even a fiction chapter carrying us into the future, "this book is a blueprint for an entire technology." The new edition has been greatly extended, with many new ideas and materials. From the foreword by Oliver Bimber, professor of augmented reality: "I was captivated by the last edition of 'The End of Hardware' on a round-trip flight to Los Angeles. This book is not only an in-depth introduction to the concept of head-attached displays for augmented reality (AR), but also a great source of inspiration for many professionals - at least it is for me. Being a technical guy, I particularly enjoyed reading the technical design chapter which, in this new edition of the book, has been greatly extended with many details on holography, light fields and MEMS. Despite a technological focus, the book is written in a popular-scientific style - and therefore allows easy access to the material - even for non-experts. If I were to characterize this book in a single word, that word would be 'inspiring'. I can only hope that one day, someone will pick up and realize these ideas. For although, this might not be the 'End of Hardware' - it could well be the beginning of many new and exciting interfaces to the digital world in which we all live in."

This is the story of the life and experiences of Fran's avatar, Ayo. Ayo is her name within Second Life. Ayo will first describe what Second Life is, how she and Fran relate, then she will tell stories of her experiences in Second Life with each of them illustrating a point about life in Second Life. All these themes are centered around the encounter of Ayo with her "twin soul" Ludwig and the reactions of their Real Life creators hidden behind their laptops. A touch of romance thrown in... What will Ayo and Ludwig's future be ? makes Ayo's Aventures pleasant and interesting to read.

This book gathers a collection of selected works and new research results of scholars and graduate students presented at the 6th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality (AIVR 2022) via the Internet, during July 22-24 2022, hosted and organized by Sojo University in conjunction with other three universities and Beijing Huaxia Rongzhi Blockchain Technology Institute. The focus of the book is interdisciplinary in nature and includes research on all aspects of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, from fundamental development to the applied system. The book covers topics such as system techniques, performance, and implementation; content creation and modelling; cognitive aspects, perception, user behaviour; AI technologies; interactions, interactive and responsive environments; AI/VR applications and case studies.

Step into the world of virtual reality with your newly created avatar and begin to experience the tools that make this world interactive! During their infancy stage, virtual environments were largely based upon the gaming community and over time have been adapted to meet the growing number of users and educators. The Virtual Worlds Handbook, with CD-ROM, provides a user-friendly approach that will help trainers and educators create an effective and interactive environment within the Second Life virtual world. This book was written to help the novice user tackle the natural learning curve while providing the experienced user with tips, tools, and tricks to help any educator or trainer meet their professional goals faster. The opportunities using virtual reality are limitless and provide online students with a unique opportunity to connect both physically and educationally to one another, to faculty, to university, and to a worldwide market.

The past decade has seen phenomenal growth in the development and use of virtual worlds. In one of the most notable, Second Life, millions of people have created online avatars in order to play games, take classes, socialize, and conduct business transactions. Second Life offers a gathering point and the tools for people to create a new world online.

Too often neglected in popular and scholarly accounts of such groundbreaking new environments is the simple truth that, of necessity, such virtual worlds emerge from physical workplaces marked by negotiation, creation, and constant change. Thomas Malaby spent a year at Linden Lab, the real-world home of Second Life, observing those who develop and profit from the sprawling, self-generating system they have created.

Some of the challenges created by Second Life for its developers were of a very traditional nature, such as how to cope with a business that is growing more quickly than existing staff can handle. Others are seemingly new: How, for instance, does one regulate something that is supposed to run on its own? Is it possible simply to create a space for people to use and then not govern its use? Can one apply these same free-range/free-market principles to the office environment in which the game is produced? "Lindens" as the Linden Lab employees call themselves found that their efforts to prompt user behavior of one sort or another were fraught with complexities, as a number of ongoing processes collided with their own interventions.

In Making Virtual Worlds, Malaby thoughtfully describes the world of Linden Lab and the challenges faced while he was conducting his in-depth ethnographic research there. He shows how the workers of a very young but quickly growing company were themselves caught up in ideas about technology, games, and organizations, and struggled to manage not only their virtual world but also themselves in a nonhierarchical fashion. In exploring the practices the Lindens employed, he questions what was at stake in their virtual world, what a game really is (and how people participate), and the role of the unexpected in a product like Second Life and an organization like Linden Lab."

As Web-based interactive 3D graphics, popularly referred to as Virtual Reality (VR), continue to become more affordable, research and development groups in various fields have been adopting Web-based VR technology. Despite substantial adoption, how and how much the technology benefits target users and the providers who choose to adapt the technology is not well understood. Previous research has established that VR provides users with unique human-computer interaction. However, little is known about how users experience the Web-based VR technology and how user-system interaction contributes to system usability. This book investigates user perception of Webbased VR comparing to conventional 2D graphics and system usability affected by the user-system interaction process. The impact of Web-based VR on system usability was empirically examined from an integrated view of technology acceptance in information systems and human-computer interaction. In addition, the impact of user characteristics on user-system interaction while using a VR system was examined. This book provides new knowledge about usability, sense of presence and technology acceptance in VR and provides insights for future research, which should be important to anyone designing, developing and evaluating a VR system in general and to an electronic commerce or market research system in particular.

2003 Susan Koppelman Award given by the Joint Women's Caucus of the Popular Culture/American Culture. Most writing on cyberculture is dominated by two almost mutually exclusive visions: the heroic image of the male outlaw hacker and the utopian myth of a gender-free cyberworld. "Reload" offers an alternative picture of cyberspace as a complex and contradictory place where there is oppression as well as liberation. It shows how cyberpunk's revolutionary claims conceal its ultimate conservatism on matters of class, gender, and race. The cyberfeminists writing here view cyberculture as a social experiment with an as-yet-unfulfilled potential to create new identities, relationships, and cultures. The book brings together women's cyberfiction--fiction that explores the relationship between people and virtual technologies--and feminist theoretical and critical investigations of gender and technoculture. From a variety of viewpoints, the writers consider the effects of rapid and profound technological change on culture, in particular both the revolutionary and reactionary effects of cyberculture on women's lives. They also explore the feminist implications of the cyborg, a human-machine hybrid. The writers challenge the conceptual and institutional rifts between high and low culture, which are embedded in the texts and artifacts of cyberculture.

Understanding Hypermedia, first published in 1993, firmly established itself in the design and media community as the definitive introduction to this exciting new communications medium. Understanding Hypermedia 2.0 completely revises the original edition, bringing the story of hypermedia bang up to date with full coverage of the Internet and other new developments. The book examines all of the digital media, from Web sites and CD-ROMs to satellite communications. A history of hypermedia and its key players is followed by a survey of the controversial issues that surround it and an overview of the elements that can make up a hypermedia product, including sound, video, animation and hypertext. An extensive gallery of applications shows how the medium is now being used to inform, entertain, sell to and communicate with users worldwide. Practical information on design and production is also included, together with an extensive glossary of technical terms and a comprehensive bibliography. The book concludes with a look towards the digital future in the new millennium.

Imagine being able to "walk" into your computer and interact with any program you create. It sounds like science fiction, but it's science fact. Surgeons now rehearse operations on computer-generated "virtual" patients, and architects "walk through" virtual buildings while the actual structures are still in blueprints. In Virtual Reality, Howard Rheingold takes us to the front lines of this revolutionary new technology that creates computer-generated worlds complete with the sensations of touch and motion, and explores its impact on everything from entertainment to particle physics.

Fantasy sports have the opportunity to provide a sporting community in which gendered physical presence plays no role-a space where men and women can compete and interact on a level playing field. Whose Game? shows, however, that while many turn to this space to socialize with friends or participate in a uniquely active and competitive fandom, men who play also depend on fantasy sports to perform a boyhood vision of masculinity otherwise inaccessible to them. Authors Rebecca Kissane and Sarah Winslow draw on a rich array of survey, interview, and observational data to examine how gender, race, and class frame the experiences of everyday fantasy sports players. This pioneering book examines gendered structures and processes, such as jock statsculinity-a nerdish form of masculine one-upmanship-and how women are often rendered as outsiders. Ultimately, Whose Game? demonstrates that fantasy sports are more than just an inconsequential leisure activity. This online world bleeds into participants' social lives in gendered ways-forging and strengthening relationships but also taking participants' time and attention to generate negative emotions, stress, discord, and unproductivity.

The book that launched the virtual reality debate is back in print with four additional appendices. Which is most fundamental--matter, energy or information? Dukes takes readers on a voyage of discovery and nothing will ever be the same. (Philosophy)

Long ago, the great Colossus of Argantheon stood upon one of the outer islands, its vast, outstretched arm pointing the way to the Crystal Pool, or so the ancient texts claim. Then, during some forgotten war, the Colossus was shattered, and its parts flung across the Archipelago, to lie in forgotten ruin.

In this expansion for Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago, players lead their warbands through a series of interlinked scenarios in a race to discover the secrets of the Colossus. Along the way, they will encounter new monsters, discover new treasures, and even recruit a few new specialist warriors to their cause. Perhaps, if they are successful, the knowledge they obtain will help point them towards the ultimate treasure!

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.

An avid gamer and sharp media critic explains meritocracy's negative contribution to video game culture-and what can be done about it Video games have brought entertainment, education, and innovation to millions, but gaming also has its dark sides. From the deep-bred misogyny epitomized by GamerGate to the endemic malice of abusive player communities, gamer culture has had serious real-world repercussions, ranging from death threats to sexist industry practices and racist condemnations. In The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games, new media critic and longtime gamer Christopher A. Paul explains how video games' focus on meritocracy empowers this negative culture. Paul first shows why meritocracy is integral to video-game design, narratives, and values. Games typically valorize skill and technique, and common video-game practices (such as leveling) build meritocratic thinking into the most basic premises. Video games are often assumed to have an even playing field, but they facilitate skill transfer from game to game, allowing certain players a built-in advantage. The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games identifies deep-seated challenges in the culture of video games-but all is not lost. As Paul argues, similarly meritocratic institutions like professional sports and higher education have found powerful remedies to alleviate their own toxic cultures, including active recruiting and strategies that promote values such as contingency, luck, and serendipity. These can be brought to the gamer universe, Paul contends, ultimately fostering a more diverse, accepting, and self-reflective culture that is not only good for gamers but good for video games as well.

Named a Best Book of the Year by the Economist, Wall Street Journal & Vox 'The father of virtual reality' (Sunday Times) explains why virtual reality presents the ultimate test for humanity. 'Essential reading, not just for VR-watchers but for anyone interested in how society came to be how it is, and what it might yet become' Economist Welcome to a mind-expanding, life-enhancing, world-changing adventure. Virtual reality has long been one of the dominant cliches of science fiction. Now virtual reality is a reality: from the startling beauty of lifelike video games to the place where war veterans overcome PTSD, surgeries are trialled, and aircraft and cities are designed. VR is, in fact now, the most effective device ever invented for researching what a human being actually is - and how we think and feel. More than thirty years ago, legendary computer scientist, visionary and artist Jaron Lanier pioneered its invention. Here he blends scientific investigation, philosophical thought experiment and his memoir of a life lived at the centre of digital innovation to explain what VR really is: the science of comprehensive illusion; the extension of the intimate magic of earliest childhood into adulthood; a hint of what life would be like without any limits. We are standing on the threshold of an entirely new realm of human creativity, expression, communication and experience, and as we use VR to test our relationship with reality, it may test us in return. 'Vivid and absolutely extraordinary' Evening Standard