Jeremy Bailenson,Jim Blascovich

Infinite Reality

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“Enough with speculation about our digital future. Infinite Reality is the straight dope on what is and isn’t happening to us right now, from two of the only scientists working on the boundaries between real life and its virtual extensions.”
—Douglas Rushkoff, author of Program or Be Programmed

Can our brains recognize where “reality” ends and “virtual” begins? Where will technology lead us in five, fifty, or five hundred years? An unrivaled guide to our digital future that has been cited by the Supreme Court, Infinite Reality is a mind-bending “journey through the virtual universe” (Wall Street Journal). Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson, two pioneering authorities, explore the profound potential of emerging technologies and reveal how our brains behave in digital worlds.

Along the way, Bailenson and Blascovich examine the timeless philosophical questions of the self and “reality” that arise through the digital experience; explain how virtual reality's latest and future forms—including immersive video games and social-networking sites—will soon be seamlessly integrated into our lives; show the many surprising practical applications of virtual reality, from education and medicine to sex and warfare; and probe further-off possibilities like “total personality downloads” that would allow your great-great-grandchildren to have a conversation with “you” a century or more after your death.
Equally fascinating, farsighted, and profound, Infinite Reality is an essential guide to our virtual future, where the experience of being human will be deeply transformed.
This book is currently unavailable
379 printed pages
Original publication
2011
Publication year
2011
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Quotes

  • b7207250222has quoted7 years ago
    SO WHAT?
    The results of these and other virtual-reality studies demonstrate that virtual behavior is, in fact, “real.” In so many facets of social behavior, ranging from financial decisions and the way blood flows through the body, to the manner people stand in a room, people use the same template they use in grounded reality and apply it to agents and avatars in virtual reality
  • b7207250222has quoted7 years ago
    For example, the interpersonal distance rules in American culture tend to involve greater distances than those in other countries. The United States is a country that likes its space. Indeed, many of its citizens become uncomfortable when a stranger from another culture comes too near.
  • b7207250222has quoted7 years ago
    WHEN THE TWO OF US INITIALLY BECAME COLLEAGUES AT THE RESEARCH Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the late 1990s, one of the tasks we faced was to prove the value of using virtual reality to perform social psychology experiments

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