Research Catalog

Title

Virtual worlds : a journey in hype and hyperreality / Benjamin Woolley.

Author

Woolley, Benjamin.

Publication

Oxford, UK ; Cambridge, USA : Blackwell, 1992.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 274 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

Computers have changed our lives; with virtual reality, they will change our very experience, recreating it in an image of our choosing. That, at least, is what the champions of virtual reality claim. It will not simply reshape our view of technology, they say, but our view of ourselves and the world we live in. It is about the increasing power of information technology to create simulated environments, new universes that are neither actual nor fictional, but somewhere in between: virtual. In Virtual Worlds, Benjamin Woolley examines the reality of virtual reality. He looks at the dramatic intellectual and cultural upheavals that gave birth to it, at the hype that surrounds it, at the people who have promoted it, and at the dramatic implications of its development. Virtual reality is not simply a technology, it is a way of thinking created and promoted by a group of technologists and thinkers that sees itself as creating our future. Virtual Worlds reveals the politics and culture of these virtual realists, and examines whether they are creating reality, or losing their grasp of it.

Subject

• Reality
• Virtual reality
• Knowledge, Sociology of
• Computers > Social aspects
• Virtual Reality
• virtual reality
• sociology of knowledge
• Cyberspace
• Virtuelle Realität
• Computer
• Künstliche Intelligenz
• Soziologie
• Virtuele werkelijkheid

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

1. Euphoria -- 2. Simulation -- 3. Virtuality -- 4. Computability -- 5. Artificial Intelligence -- 6. Cyberspace -- 7. Interface -- 8. Hypertext -- 9. Fiction -- 10. Hyperreality -- 11. Reality -- 12. Discovery.

ISBN

• 0631182144
• 9780631182146
• 0140154396
• 9780140154399

LCCN

92007617

OCLC

• ocm25411448
• 25411448
• SCSB-9579982

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library