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Virtual America - Sleepwalking through Paradise (Paperback)
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Virtual America - Sleepwalking through Paradise (Paperback)
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Virtual America traces the complex relationship between Americans,
technology, and their environment as it has unfolded over the past
several centuries. Throughout history Americans have constructed
mental pictures of unique places, such as the American West, that
have taken on more authority than the actual gritty landscapes.
This disconnect from reality is magnified by the new world of
virtual realities on the computer screen, where personal immersion
in interactive simulations becomes the "default" environment.
Virtual America identifies the connections (or lack thereof)
between our individual selves, an American identity, and the
geography "out there." John Opie examines what he calls First
Nature (the natural world), Second Nature (metropolitan
infrastructure/built environment), and Third Nature (virtual
reality in cyberspace). He also explores how Americans have
historically dreamed about a better life in daily, ordinary
existence and then fulfilled it through the Engineered America of
our built environment, the Consumer America of material well-being,
and the Triumphal America of our conviction that we are the world's
exceptional model. But these dream worlds have also encouraged
placelessness and thus indifference to our dwelling in home ground.
Finally, Opie explores Last Nature (a sense of place) and argues
that when we identify an authentic place, we can locate
authenticity of self-a reification of place and self-by their
connectedness. John Opie is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of
Environmental History and Policy at the New Jersey Institute of
Technology. He is the founding editor of the journal Environmental
History and the author of Nature's Nation: An Environmental History
of the United States and Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land, available
in a Bison Books edition. Opie currently lives on the Indiana Dunes
of Lake Michigan and teaches at the University of Chicago.
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