Virtuality And Humanity

Author : Sam N. Lehman-Wilzig
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 9811665265
Total Pages : 347 pages
Book Rating : 4.64/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Virtuality and Humanity written by Sam N. Lehman-Wilzig and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-01 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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?

Author : Richard Frankel
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351379712
Total Pages : 191 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Human Virtuality and Digital Life written by Richard Frankel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-08-12 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Mark Grimshaw
Publisher : Oxford Handbooks
ISBN 13 : 0199826161
Total Pages : 794 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality written by Mark Grimshaw and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2014-02 with total page 794 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0470023171
Total Pages : 468 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Handbook of Virtual Humans written by Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2005-10-31 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtual Humans are becoming more and more popular and used in many applications such as the entertainment industry (in both film and games) and medical applications. This comprehensive book covers all areas of this growing industry including face and body motion, body modelling, hair simulation, expressive speech simulation and facial communication, interaction with 3D objects, rendering skin and clothes and the standards for Virtual Humans. Written by a team of current and former researchers at MIRALab, University of Geneva or VRlab, EPFL, this book is the definitive guide to the area. Explains the concept of avatars and autonomous virtual actors and the main techniques to create and animate them (body and face). Presents the concepts of behavioural animation, crowd simulation, intercommunication between virtual humans, and interaction between real humans and autonomous virtual humans Addresses the advanced topics of hair representation and cloth animation with applications in fashion design Discusses the standards for Virtual Humans, such as MPEG-4 Face Animation and MPEG-4 Body Animation.

Author : Frank Steinicke
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1441984321
Total Pages : 405 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Human Walking in Virtual Environments written by Frank Steinicke and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a survey of past and recent developments on human walking in virtual environments with an emphasis on human self-motion perception, the multisensory nature of experiences of walking, conceptual design approaches, current technologies, and applications. The use of Virtual Reality and movement simulation systems is becoming increasingly popular and more accessible to a wide variety of research fields and applications. While, in the past, simulation technologies have focused on developing realistic, interactive visual environments, it is becoming increasingly obvious that our everyday interactions are highly multisensory. Therefore, investigators are beginning to understand the critical importance of developing and validating locomotor interfaces that can allow for realistic, natural behaviours. The book aims to present an overview of what is currently understood about human perception and performance when moving in virtual environments and to situate it relative to the broader scientific and engineering literature on human locomotion and locomotion interfaces. The contents include scientific background and recent empirical findings related to biomechanics, self-motion perception, and physical interactions. The book also discusses conceptual approaches to multimodal sensing, display systems, and interaction for walking in real and virtual environments. Finally, it will present current and emerging applications in areas such as gait and posture rehabilitation, gaming, sports, and architectural design.

Author : Thorsten Botz-Bornstein
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004302301
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Virtual Reality: The Last Human Narrative? written by Thorsten Botz-Bornstein and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Oliver Krüger
Publisher : transcript Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3839450594
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Virtual Immortality - God, Evolution, and the Singularity in Post- and Transhumanism written by Oliver Krüger and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2021-10-31 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, ideas of post- and transhumanism have been popularized by novels, TV series, and Hollywood movies. According to this radical perspective, humankind and all biological life have become obsolete. Traditional forms of life are inefficient at processing information and inept at crossing the high frontier: outer space. While humankind can expect to be replaced by their own artificial progeny, posthumanists assume that they will become an immortal part of a transcendent superintelligence. Krüger's award-winning study examines the historical and philosophical context of these futuristic promises by Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, Frank Tipler, and other posthumanist thinkers.

Author : N. Katherine Hayles
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226321398
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How We Became Posthuman written by N. Katherine Hayles and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-05-15 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Jason Jerald
Publisher : Morgan & Claypool
ISBN 13 : 1970001135
Total Pages : 523 pages
Book Rating : 4.36/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The VR Book written by Jason Jerald and published by Morgan & Claypool. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : David J. Chalmers
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393635813
Total Pages : 544 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy written by David J. Chalmers and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading philosopher takes a mind-bending journey through virtual worlds, illuminating the nature of reality and our place within it. Virtual reality is genuine reality; that’s the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of “technophilosophy,” David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already. Along the way, Chalmers conducts a grand tour of big ideas in philosophy and science. He uses virtual reality technology to offer a new perspective on long-established philosophical questions. How do we know that there’s an external world? Is there a god? What is the nature of reality? What’s the relation between mind and body? How can we lead a good life? All of these questions are illuminated or transformed by Chalmers’ mind-bending analysis. Studded with illustrations that bring philosophical issues to life, Reality+ is a major statement that will shape discussion of philosophy, science, and technology for years to come.