A macroscopic realization of the peculiar virtual particles is presented. The classical Helmholtz and the Schrödinger equations are differential equations of the same mathematical structure. The solutions with an imaginary wave number are called evanescent modes in the case of elastic and electromagnetic fields. In the case of non-relativistic quantum mechanical fields they are called tunneling solutions. The imaginary wave numbers point to strange consequences: The waves are non-local, they are not observable, and they are described as virtual (...) particles. During the last two decades QED calculations of the solutions with an imaginary wave number have been experimentally confirmed for phonons, photons, and electrons. The experimental proofs of the predictions of non-relativistic quantum mechanics and the Wigner phase time approach for the elastic, electromagnetic and Schrödinger fields will be presented in this article. The results are zero time in the barrier and an interaction time (i.e. a phase shift) at the barrier interfaces. The measured tunneling time scales approximately inversely with the particle energy. Actually, the tunneling time is given only by the barrier boundary interaction time, as zero time is spent inside a barrier. (shrink)

Este trabalho tem como objetivo discutir aspectos relacionados à virtualização e à liberdade presentes nos jogos eletrônicos que se configuram como novos espaços de vivências, interação e subjetivação. Para tanto, buscamos captar a singularidade presente na relação que os jogadoresestabelecem com o espaço virtual, utilizando como inspiração metodológica a cartografia. Na pesquisa, cinco jovens foram observados e relataram suas experiências com os jogos eletrônicos. A partir disso, identificamos que os jogos eletrônicos como espaços virtuais permitem lidar com a noção (...) de tempode forma diferenciada, aumentam o grau de liberdade e flexibilizam aspectos morais, trazendo à tona a noção de ciberética. (shrink)

The Virtual Embodied is intended to inform and provoke. It juxtaposes cutting-edge theories, polemics, and creative practices to uncover ethical, aesthetic and ecological implications of why, how and in particular where, human actions, observations and insights take place. It refuses simply to hold a euphoric view of technology yet equally resists the apocalyptic scorn which surrounds the new. The contributors use a range of interdisciplinary strategies to point to a re-worked aesthetic for embodying knowledge and explore such areas as (...) colonialism and the internet, the virtual unconscious in electronic systems, theatre as a virtual space, 'information' and the capitalist society, ecstatic bodies and the rave scene, desire and the 'virtual comfort' zone. In The Virtual Embodied many of the authors, artists, performers and designers apply their interdisciplinary passions to questions of embodied knowledge and virtual space. (shrink)

When certain formal symbol systems (e.g., computer programs) are implemented as dynamic physical symbol systems (e.g., when they are run on a computer) their activity can be interpreted at higher levels (e.g., binary code can be interpreted as LISP, LISP code can be interpreted as English, and English can be interpreted as a meaningful conversation). These higher levels of interpretability are called "virtual" systems. If such a virtual system is interpretable as if it had a mind, is such (...) a "virtual mind" real? This is the question addressed in this "virtual" symposium, originally conducted electronically among four cognitive scientists: Donald Perlis, a computer scientist, argues that according to the computationalist thesis, virtual minds are real and hence Searle's Chinese Room Argument fails, because if Searle memorized and executed a program that could pass the Turing Test in Chinese he would have a second, virtual, Chinese-understanding mind of which he was unaware (as in multiple personality). Stevan Harnad, a psychologist, argues that Searle's Argument is valid, virtual minds are just hermeneutic overinterpretations, and symbols must be grounded in the real world of objects, not just the virtual world of interpretations. Computer scientist Patrick Hayes argues that Searle's Argument fails, but because Searle does not really implement the program: A real implementation must not be homuncular but mindless and mechanical, like a computer. Only then can it give rise to a mind at the virtual level. Philosopher Ned Block suggests that there is no reason a mindful implementation would not be a real one. (shrink)

Although the body has been the focus of much contemporary cultural theory, the models that are typically applied neglect the most salient characteristics of embodied existence—movement, affect, and sensation—in favor of concepts derived from linguistic theory. In _Parables for the Virtual_ Brian Massumi views the body and media such as television, film, and the Internet, as cultural formations that operate on multiple registers of sensation beyond the reach of the reading techniques founded on the standard rhetorical and semiotic models. Renewing (...) and assessing William James’s radical empiricism and Henri Bergson’s philosophy of perception through the filter of the post-war French philosophy of Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault, Massumi links a cultural logic of variation to questions of movement, affect, and sensation. If such concepts are as fundamental as signs and significations, he argues, then a new set of theoretical issues appear, and with them potential new paths for the wedding of scientific and cultural theory. Replacing the traditional opposition of literal and figural with new distinctions between stasis and motion and between actual and virtual, _Parables for the Virtual _tackles related theoretical issues by applying them to cultural mediums as diverse as architecture, body art, the digital art of Stelarc, and Ronald Reagan’s acting career. The result is an intriguing combination of cultural theory, science, and philosophy that asserts itself in a crystalline and multi-faceted argument. _Parables for the Virtual_ will interest students and scholars of continental and Anglo-American philosophy, cultural studies, cognitive science, electronic art, digital culture, and chaos theory, as well as those concerned with the “science wars” and the relation between the humanities and the sciences in general. (shrink)

Virtual Heritage is the use of electronic media to recreate or interpret culture and cultural artifacts as they are today or as they might have been in the past. By definition, VH applications employ some kind of three dimensional representation; the means used to display it range from still photos to immersive Virtual Reality. Virtual Heritage is a very active area of research and development in both the academic and the commercial realms.. Most VH applications are intended (...) forsome kind of educational use. While the main activity of virtual heritage is to create ancient artifacts, the real goal is to understand ancient cultures.Most VH applications are architectural reconstructions, centered on a reconstructed building or monument. However, in the same way that archaeologists and historians study the artifacts because they are the primary cultural evidence we have, VH uses architecture as a frame for recreating ancient cultures. The larger goal of VH is to recreate ancient cultures, not as dead simulations, but as living museums where students/users can enter and understand a culture that is different from their own. The closest analog is the real-world living museums, where actors in period dress occupy a life-size historical setting and interact with the visitors. Ultimately, we would like to see the users themselves creating activities in the virtual space as a way of exploring different cultural viewpoints. For example, students who know about the Virtual Egyptian Temple and the supporting material may attempt to recreate activities there. In doing so, they would learn about what is and is not possible in the architectural and cultural space.In this paper we will begin by reviewing the issues and tradeoffs around building the architectural models for VH applications. These models are crucial in themselves and many of the issues involved in designing and creating them also apply to the dynamic and interactive aspects of VR. Then, we will touch on issues of how to bring culture to life in VR, the strengths and limitations for VR technology for VH applications. Finally, we will present the Virtual Egyptian Temple, our current project, as a working example. (shrink)

Virtual Heritage (VH) is the use of electronic media to recreate or interpret culture and cultural artifacts as they are today or as they might have been in the past (Moltenbrey, 2001; Roehl, 1997). By definition, VH applications employ some kind of three dimensional representation; the means used to display it range from still photos to immersive Virtual Reality. Virtual Heritage is a very active area of research and development in both the academic and the commercial realms. (...) (Roehl, 1997; Mitchell and Economou, 2000; Addison, 2000; Stone and Ojika, 2002; Champion, 2004b; Champion and Sekiguichi, 2004; Levy, 2004). Most VH applications are intended forsome kind of educational use. While the main activity of virtual heritage is to create ancient artifacts, the real goal is to understand ancient cultures.Most VH applications are architectural reconstructions, centered on a reconstructed building or monument. However, in the same way that archaeologists and historians study the artifacts because they are the primary cultural evidence we have, VH uses architecture as a frame for recreating ancient cultures. The larger goal of VH is to recreate ancient cultures, not as dead simulations, but as living museums where students/users can enter and understand a culture that is different from their own. The closest analog is the real-world living museums, where actors in period dress occupy a life-size historical setting and interact with the visitors. Ultimately, we would like to see the users themselves creating activities in the virtual space as a way of exploring different cultural viewpoints. For example, students who know about the Virtual Egyptian Temple (Jacobson and Holden, 2005) and the supporting material may attempt to recreate activities there. In doing so, they would learn about what is and is not possible in the architectural and cultural space.In this paper we will begin by reviewing the issues and tradeoffs around building the architectural models for VH applications. These models are crucial in themselves and many of the issues involved in designing and creating them also apply to the dynamic and interactive aspects of VR. Then, we will touch on issues of how to bring culture to life in VR, the strengths and limitations for VR technology for VH applications. Finally, we will present the Virtual Egyptian Temple, our current project, as a working example. (shrink)

Virtual Heritage (VH) is the use of electronic media to recreate or interpret culture and cultural artifacts as they are today or as they might have been in the past (Moltenbrey, 2001; Roehl, 1997). By definition, VH applications employ some kind of three dimensional representation; the means used to display it range from still photos to immersive Virtual Reality. Virtual Heritage is a very active area of research and development in both the academic and the commercial realms. (...) (Roehl, 1997; Mitchell and Economou, 2000; Addison, 2000; Stone and Ojika, 2002; Champion, 2004b; Champion and Sekiguichi, 2004; Levy, 2004). Most VH applications are intended forsome kind of educational use. While the main activity of virtual heritage is to create ancient artifacts, the real goal is to understand ancient cultures.Most VH applications are architectural reconstructions, centered on a reconstructed building or monument. However, in the same way that archaeologists and historians study the artifacts because they are the primary cultural evidence we have, VH uses architecture as a frame for recreating ancient cultures. The larger goal of VH is to recreate ancient cultures, not as dead simulations, but as living museums where students/users can enter and understand a culture that is different from their own. The closest analog is the real-world living museums, where actors in period dress occupy a life-size historical setting and interact with the visitors. Ultimately, we would like to see the users themselves creating activities in the virtual space as a way of exploring different cultural viewpoints. For example, students who know about the Virtual Egyptian Temple (Jacobson and Holden, 2005) and the supporting material may attempt to recreate activities there. In doing so, they would learn about what is and is not possible in the architectural and cultural space.In this paper we will begin by reviewing the issues and tradeoffs around building the architectural models for VH applications. These models are crucial in themselves and many of the issues involved in designing and creating them also apply to the dynamic and interactive aspects of VR. Then, we will touch on issues of how to bring culture to life in VR, the strengths and limitations for VR technology for VH applications. Finally, we will present the Virtual Egyptian Temple, our current project, as a working example. (shrink)

The regulation of the activity of multiple autonomous entities represented in a multi-agent system, in environments with no central design (and thus with no cooperative assumption), is gaining much attention in the research community. Approaches to this concern include the use of norms in so-called normative multi-agent systems and the development of electronic institution frameworks. In this paper we describe our approach towards the development of an electronic institution providing an enforceable normative environment. Within this environment, institutional services are provided (...) that assist agents in forming cooperative structures whose commitments are made explicit through contracts. Our normative framework borrows some concepts from contract law theory. Contracts are formalized using norms which are used by the institution while monitoring agents’ activities, thus making our normative environment dynamic. We regard the electronic institution as a means to facilitate both the creation and the enforcement of contracts between agents. A model of “institutional reality” is presented that allows for monitoring the fulfillment of norms. The paper also distinguishes our approach from other developments of the electronic institution concept. We address the application of our proposal in the B2B field, namely regarding the formation of Virtual Organizations. (shrink)

The impressive development of electronic communication techniques has given rise to virtual communities. The nature of these computer-mediated communities has been the subject of much recent debate. Are they ordinary social groups in electronic form, or are they fundamentally different from traditional communities? Understanding virtual communities seems a prerequisite for the design of better communication systems. To clarify this debate, we will resort to the classical sociological distinction between small traditional communities (based on personal relations) and modern social (...) groups (bound by looser, more impersonal links). We will argue that the discussion about virtual communities is often vitiated by a simplistic assimilation to traditional communities, whereas they may be in fact quite different and much more impersonal. Virtual communities are often bound by reference to common objects or goals, and not by personal relations. In this respect, virtual communities are just another example of a long-term evolution of modern society toward more abstract social relationships. (shrink)

This paper critically describes the mediation of social relations by information technology, drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas. In the first of three movements, I discuss ethical relations as primordial sociality based in proximity. In the second movement I discuss the how the self encounters the Other, the ethical contact. How can the self make contact with the Other without turning the Other into a theme, a concept or a category? In the third movement, I discuss the electronic mediation (...) of the social as simulation. I argue that simulation shatters proximity since it transforms expression, the trace, into presentation, an image. I argue that the distance produced by the mediation increases the potential for the Other to become appropriated by the self-certain ego as a theme, according to its categories. In simulation, proximity is shattered and the ego can no longer be disturbed---no longer become a hostage. In a final section, I explore alternative arguments for the possibility of electronic mediation that preserves the trace, that possibility of being disturbed. (shrink)

The Internet, as it exists today, is an outgrowth of the late 1960’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. During the 1980’s, the National Science Foundation established a high-speed, high-capacity network called NSFnet connecting many universities and government agencies. Finally, with the creation of the World Wide Web and the development and diffusion of inexpensive, reliable and easy to use public Internet access, electronic information technologies connect an increasingly large portion of the population. As a result, the communities with which we (...) are all familiar, communities based on geographic proximity, have changed. These sorts of changes raise many interesting but difficult questions. This paper focuses on two of those questions. First, what does the increasing use of and reliance on electronically mediated communications portend for our understanding of human communities, and second, what sorts of socio-political concepts and relationships best characterize the new “virtual community”? (shrink)

The Internet, as it exists today, is an outgrowth of the late 1960’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. During the 1980’s, the National Science Foundation established a high-speed, high-capacity network called NSFnet connecting many universities and government agencies. Finally, with the creation of the World Wide Web and the development and diffusion of inexpensive, reliable and easy to use public Internet access, electronic information technologies connect an increasingly large portion of the population. As a result, the communities with which we (...) are all familiar, communities based on geographic proximity, have changed. These sorts of changes raise many interesting but difficult questions. This paper focuses on two of those questions. First, what does the increasing use of and reliance on electronically mediated communications portend for our understanding of human communities, and second, what sorts of socio-political concepts and relationships best characterize the new “virtual community”? (shrink)

Virtual reality (VR) is the computer simulation of a three‐dimensional environment that a person can interact with using special electronic equipment, such as a headset with an integrated display. Often coupled with VR, exergames are video games that involve physical exercise. Little is known regarding the chronic effects of exergaming through VR chon cognitive functions. Eleven young participants were enrolled in this crossover exploratory study. They had to follow two trainings of 5 consecutive days, 15 min per day, interspaced (...) by a 1‐month washout period. Trainings were performed in a random order: (1) a video training using shadow boxing fitness videos (SBV) and (2) a VR training using a three‐dimensional game where the aim is to cut moving cubes with a sword in each hand. Before and after each training period, a battery of cognitive tests was performed to assess executive functions, such as attention (change blindness), reaction time, response inhibition (go/no‐go, Stroop task), or flexibility (trail making test). Fine motor skills were also evaluated through a Fitt's task. No effect of the SBV training was observed on any of the cognitive functions tested. On the contrary, a significant increased performance in selective attention and observation tests was found after VR training, as well as in inhibitory processes (Stroop and go/no‐go). Other performances were unaffected by either VR or SBV training. The present study argues that VR exergaming is a promising tool to promote cognitive enhancement but targets specific functions according to the type of interface/game that is used. (shrink)

As users of computer networks have become more active in producing their own electronic records, in the form of transcripts of onlinediscussions, ethicists have attempted to interpret this new situation interms of earlier models of personal data protection. But thistransference results in unprecedented problems for researchers. Thispaper examines some of the central dichotomies and paradoxes in thedebate on research ethics online in the context of the concrete study ofa virtual community that we carried out. We argue that alienation, notprivacy, (...) is the actual core of the ethical problems of virtual communityresearch. While practically everybody is allowed and often welcome tojoin online communities (which undermines the claim to privacy), mostparticipants would agree that members and visitors are not authorized touse, or `harvest,'' or sell the product of the group communication. To dothat, they would be expected to ask for permission preferably before thecontent has been produced, thus granting participants'' right to controltheir own product. This `non-alienation principle'' should be the basisof emergent social conventions in cyberspace. It would apply toresearchers as to anyone else. With certain types of research, wesuggest, cyberspace provides unique opportunities for empoweringsubjects by involving them as contributors in the research project. (shrink)

Human consciousness, the result of breathing process as dealt with in the Upanishads, is translated into modern scientific terms and modeled as a mechanical oscillator of infrasonic frequency. The bio-mechanic oscillator is also proposed as the source of psychic energy. This is further advanced to get an insight of human consciousness (the being of mind) and functions of mind (the becoming of mind) in terms of psychic energy and reversible transformation of its virtual reflection. An alternative analytical insight of (...) human consciousness and mental functions to other theoretical approaches is developed based on Upanishadic insight and presented.That reversible transformation of virtual psychic energy reflection termed as maya, creating various consequential / parallel / simultaneous conscious-states, phases, cognitive and communicative states, modes of language acquisition and communication, and kinds of function of human mind is visualized. The concept is extended to delineate form, structure and functional mechanism of human mind and to know how it facilitates human mental acquisitions, retention, communications, including language abilities. This proposal is extensively discussed and the hardware and software of mind as envisaged in Indian philosophical systems are put forward.All this presentation is translated to neuro-biology in terms of brain wave modulation / demodulation terms. Also a preliminary proposition of physic-chemical nature of human thoughts and ideas is given. (shrink)

The electronic and muonic hydrogen energy levels are calculated very accurately [1] in Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) by coupling the Dirac Equation four vector (c ,mc2) current covariantly with the external electromagnetic (EM) field four vector in QED’s Interactive Representation (IR). The c -Non Exclusion Principle(c -NEP) states that, if one accepts c as the electron/muon velocity operator because of the very accurate hydrogen energy levels calculated, the one must also accept the resulting electron/muon internal spatial and time coordinate (...) operators (ISaTCO) derived directly from c without any assumptions. This paper does not change any of the accurate QED calculations of hydrogen’s energy levels, given the simplistic model of the proton used in these calculations [1]. The Proton Radius Puzzle [2, 3] may indicate that new physics is necessary beyond the Standard Model (SM), and this paper describes the bizarre, and very different, situation when the electron and muon are located “inside” the spatially extended proton with their Centers of Charge (CoCs) orbiting the proton at the speed of light in S energy states. The electron/muon center of charge (CoC) is a structureless point that vibrates rapidly in its inseparable, non-random vacuum whose geometry and time structure are defined by the electron/muon ISaTCO discrete geometry. The electron/muon self mass becomes finite in a natural way due to the ISaTCOs cutting off high virtual photon energies in the photon propagator. The Dirac-Maxwell-Wilson (DMW) Equations are derived from the ISaTCO for the EM fields of an electron/muon, and the electron/muon “look” like point particles in far field scattering experiments in the same way the electric field from a sphere with evenly distributed charge “e” “looks” like a point with the same charge in the far field (Gauss Law). The electron’s/muon’s three fluctuating CoC internal spatial coordinate operators have eight possible eigenvalues [4, 5, 6] that fall on a spherical shell centered on the electron’s CoM with radius in the rest frame. The electron/muon internal time operator is discrete, describes the rapid virtual electron/positron pair production and annihilation. The ISaTCO together create a current that produce spin and magnetic moment operators, and the electron and muon no longer have “intrinsic” properties since the ISaTCO kinematics define spin and magnetic moment properties. (shrink)

The book proposes an analysis of Rousseau's political philosophy, in the light of direct democracy proposals of our day. Is the model proposed in the "Social Contract" applicable in the age of virtual reality, the "network" and electronic devices within everyone's reach? It is a strictly technical investigation of the philosophical presuppositions of direct democracy... The volume contains an analytical summary of Rousseau's political works and a dictionary of political and philosophical terms--Translated from publisher's description.

Riassunto: Può la corporalità dirsi ancora una condizione costitutiva dell’esperienza nella presente era digitale? Esistono due fondamentali modi di affrontare la questione, la cui rilevanza è stata di recente sottolineata da ricercatori attivi nei campi dell’ Intelligenza Artificiale Incorporata. Il primo interpreta la questione come incentrata su un’indagine della relazione fra corporalità e digitalizzazione, il processo cioè di digitalizzare dati il quale rende possibile simulare, aumentare e perfino costruire la realtà all’interno di uno spazio di esperienza virtuale, assumendo l’idea tradizionale (...) del computing come un’attività che utilizza dispositivi artificiali, elettronici, per processare, gestire e comunicare informazioni. Il secondo considera la stessa relazione da una diversa prospettiva, facendo cioè riferimento al computing come a un’attività naturale, secondo l’emergente ricerca di computing naturale condotta nel campo del computing non convenzionale. Seguendo quest’ultima prospettiva, che sta acquisendo un crescente consenso all’interno della comunità scientifica, il lavoro indagherà il ruolo costitutivo della corporalità rispetto all’esperienza virtuale associata a una nota ed oramai autonoma area di ricerca del computing naturale, vale a dire il computing morfologico, utilizzando il metodo della fenomenologia genetica. Parole chiave: Computing naturale e computing artificiale; Corporeità; Morfologia naturale e morfologia artificiale; Fenomenologia genetica Lived Body and Virtual experience. A Phenomenological Perspective: In what sense can corporality still be considered a constitutive condition for experience in the current digital age? Recent scholarship in the fields of Embodied Artificial Intelligence and the philosophy of Embodied Artificial Intelligence has probed the relevance of two approaches to this question. The first queries the relationship between corporality and digitization, i.e., examining how it is possible to simulate, augment, and even construct reality within a space of virtual experience by digitizing data. This approach builds on the traditional idea of computing as an activity that uses artificial, mostly electronic, devices to process, manage, and communicate information. The second approach, increasingly favored by computer scientists, considers computing to be a natural activity, and approaches this same relationship from the perspective of emerging research in unconventional computing, specifically Natural Computing. This paper follows the latter approach, addressing the constitutive role of corporality in virtual experience associated with a well-known and still autonomous research area within Natural Computing, that is, Morphological Computing, from the from the point of view of genetic phenomenology. Keywords: Artificial and Natural Computing; Corporality; Natural and Artificial Morphology; Genetic Phenomenology. (shrink)

Human beings have been spending a lot of time in front of a screen for many years. Through the computer and other electronic devices, we interact with our friends and colleagues, we maintain contact with our relatives, we carry out part of our work, we study and we carry out leisure activities. Despite the many advantages that all this has brought to our lives, ethical and social problems have also arisen. Although these electronic devices have become increasingly immersive and interactive, (...) virtual reality seems to present a qualitative leap. In this chapter we will analyse how big this jump is, we will review the ethical problems that may appear, we will ask ourselves if they are really new and we will study how and to what extent we can face them. (shrink)

This article discusses the Embodied Generative Music (EGM) project carried out at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics IEM in Austria. In investigating a new interface that combines motion capture and sound processing software with movement improvisation and performance, I focus on dancers? learning processes of dwelling in the virtual sonic environment. Applying phenomenology and its concepts, I describe how dancers explore reversibility of sound and movement to shape this connection in an artistically expressive manner. The article proposes (...) that dancers build bodily knowledge through both the sonic environment and their own passive and active, intuitive and deliberate, movement choices. While dwelling in a digital environment changes dancers? habitual manners of behaving, it opens up to them new kinds of kinaesthetic opportunities of intimacy and pleasure in motion. The findings from this research reveal the importance of bodily interaction with virtual environments in developing new movement-based interfaces. (shrink)

Computer modelling of personality and behaviour is becoming increasingly important in many fields of computer science and psychology. Personality and emotion-driven Believable Agents are needed in areas like human–machine interfaces, electronic advertising and, most notably, electronic entertainment. Computer models of personality can help explain personality by illustrating its underlying structure and dynamics. This work presents a neural network model of personality and personality change. The goals are to help understand personality and create more realistic and believable characters for interactive video (...) games. The model is based largely on trait theories of personality. Behaviour in the model results from the interaction of three components: personality-based predispositions for behaviour, moods/emotions and environmental situations. Personality develops gradually over time depending on the situations encountered. Modelling personality change produces interesting and believable virtual characters whose behaviours change in psychologically plausible ways. (shrink)

Imagine you are an editor at a well respected national magazine with a rich history in photojournalism. The magazine is ready for publication but there is a problem with the cover. The photograph chosen for the cover does not quite fit the vertical format of the magazine and no other picture has all the qualities to best illustrate the cover story. No problem! With a computer, an operator simply moves the objects in the photograph closer together to fit the magazine (...) format perfectly. The finished product is virtually undetectable, even by experts. (shrink)

My research into Virtual Reality technology and its central property of immersion has indicated that immersion in Virtual Reality (VR) electronic systems is a significant key to the understanding of contemporary culture as well as considerable aspects of previous culture as detected in the histories of philosophy and the visual arts. The fundamental change in aesthetic perception engendered by immersion, a perception which is connected to the ideal of total-immersion in virtual space, identifies certain shifts in ontology (...) which are relevant to a better understanding of the human being. This understanding was achieved through a broad inquiry into the histories of Virtual Reality, philosophy, and the visual arts and has lead to the formulation of an aesthetic theory of immersive consciousness indicative of immersive culture. The primary subject of this discourse is immersion then: an experience which will be identified within the dissertation as the indispensable characteristic of Virtual Reality. The understanding of immersion arrived at here will be used to fashion a synchronous theory of art particularly informed by encounters and concepts of immersion into virtuality. To sufficiently address this subject in a scholarly fashion, I have researched, found and accumulated aesthetic and philosophic examples of immersive tendencies, as found within the histories of art and philosophy, which subsequently contributed towards the articulation of what I have come to call immersive consciousness. As a result of formulating such an immersive consciousness, a good deal of the basis for the questioning of the Western ontological tradition has been found in the Western tradition itself when we look with new eyes and ask new uncertain questions. Moreover, this immersive consciousness will be used to propose some abstract questions encircling today's electronic-based culture. Through the structuring of the argument within the thesis - and overtly within the conclusion - I have articulated a non-teleological creative strategy which provides the basis for an unconstraining integration of noologies (ways of semblancing the thinking process). This strategy provides a means of exemplifying - and for honoring - various methods of thinking. This structuring strategy is consistent with the 'hacker ethic' as defined by Steven Levy, as a demand that access to computers - and anything which might teach us something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. To follow this strategy, this dissertation has set out to understand how topical conceptions of virtual immersion connect to pre-existing systems of thought as revealed in art as they have extended out of antecedent ontological self-understandings, historical human self-understandings which have evidenced themselves in the elaboration of technological objectives. To do this I have forged a certain rhizomatic paternity/maternity for Virtual Reality within this dissertation by joining choice immersive examples of simulacra technology into mental connections with the relevant examples culled from the histories of art, architecture, information-technology, sex, myth, space, consciousness and philosophy. (shrink)

While electronic mail has enjoyed rapid growth in the workplace, many companies have failed to establish clear expectations among employees about their e-mail privacy rights. This has resulted in controversy and even lawsuits against employers where employees later learned that management personnel monitored or read their electronic communications. It has been speculated that most employees underestimate the legal right of their employer to engage in e-mail monitoring activities. However, this issue has been virtually unexplored from a research perspective. Consequently, the (...) purpose of this study is to assess individuals'' ethical beliefs and perceptions about electronic mail privacy. This study of more than 200 e-mail users reveals that there is significant resistance to e-mail monitoring, and that many individuals have a relatively poor understanding of their e-mail privacy rights. The results also suggest that companies need to develop and communicate a policy to employees that addresses this issue. Finally, this study suggests several possibilities for further research. Building a greater body of knowledge of this domain should assist business leaders and lawmakers as they work to formulate an effective response to this workplace challenge that will equitably balance the rights of employees and employers. (shrink)

What can it mean to criticize when you are inside the work itself? In a immersive electronic or digital environment critic is not distanced on a platform based on firm principles. Yet criticism self-awareness and commentary remain possible. This essay examines various techniques for dealing with immersive environments critically.

This paper reports on-going work in the eSCAPE Project (Esprit Long Term Research Project 25377) directed to the research and development of electronic landscapes for public use. Our concern here is to elucidate a sociologically informed approach towards the design of electronic landscapes or virtual worlds. We suggest — and demonstrate through ethnographic studies of virtual technologies at a multimedia art museum and information technology trade show — that members sense of space is produced through social practices tied (...) to the accomplishment of activities occurring within the locations their actions are situated. Space, in other words, is socially constructed and shaped through members’ practices for accomplishing situated activities. We explicate, by practical examples, an approach to discovering social practices in and through which a sense of space is constructed and outline how such understandings may be used to formulate requirements for the design of electronic landscapes. In explicating our ethnographically informed approach, we outline how future technologies may bedeveloped through the situated evaluation of experimental prototypes in public use. (shrink)

After a century of cinema, accounts of this cultural form see it as divided between documentation and animation (the real and the magical). Yet the challenge that cinema presented in terms of a relocation of perception from the eye to the machine has become occluded. The shock of cinema in its earliest manifestations resided in the body of the spectator, no longer the site of primary perception, but dependent on an other (the camera, the projector) lacking in human qualities. This (...) article argues that the newly configured body–machine relationship provided by cinema became a marginalized feature of cinematic culture, an ex-centric cinema relegated to the sub-fields of science and educational film. In the mid-20th century the project surfaces spectacularly in the work of pioneering designers Charles and Ray Eames, most poignantly in their film Powers of Ten (first made in 1968, remade in 1977), a journey into the cosmos and back again into the body of a man. Bringing together discourses of space travel, cartography, physics and cinema, the film moves us towards an understanding of visual culture as an apparatus of calculated possibilities, where visualization replaces representation. If we take the Powers of Ten as a non-representational film, an ex-centric cinematic practice, we uncover non-linear and non-representational ways of apprehending the relationship between bodies and matter. This literal line of flight is one path that cinema may have taken. Its presence, however, is detectable outside of the cinema, in the software programs of electronic cartography copyrighted as Google Earth. The human body is not made virtual by its engagement with calculated visualization but is in turn part of the field of enquiry, equally porous, and definable in various scales and in different dimensions. (shrink)

About forty years ago, when print media were still in their ascendancy, Marshall McLuhan argued that all media are extensions of the senses and that the rational view of the world associated with print is being replaced by a world-view associated with electronic media that stresses feelings and emotions (McLuhan, 1964). In 2003 researchers from the School of Information Management Sciences at Berkeley estimated that five exabytes (five billion gigabytes) of information had been generated in the previous year, equivalent to (...) 37,000 times the holdings of the Library of Congress and that 92.00% of this was on magnetic media, mostly hard disks, while only 0.01% was in print (http://www.sims.berkeley.edu, 2003). This SIMS estimate could be wrong by several orders of magnitude and it would still be clear that the era of the printed word is waning rapidly. We are well-advised to pay attention to McLuhan’s suggestionthat electronic media change how we think and how we feel.Sense of place and virtual reality are both inextricably caught up in this cultural-technological upheaval. I have written about the concept of ‘place’ from a phenomenological perspective for many years and have achieved a reasonable understanding of its subtleties, but I have a limited knowledge of digital virtual reality and its technical attributes. Nevertheless, it seems to me that a mutual interaction is at work between what might be called ‘real’ place and virtual places, that digital virtual reality shares characteristics with other electronic media and that our experiences of real places are being changed those same media. This essay explores these issues particularlyfrom the perspective of the distinction between spirit of place and sense of place. (shrink)

About forty years ago, when print media were still in their ascendancy, Marshall McLuhan argued that all media are extensions of the senses and that the rational view of the world associated with print is being replaced by a world-view associated with electronic media that stresses feelings and emotions. In 2003 researchers from the School of Information Management Sciences at Berkeley estimated that five exabytes of information had been generated in the previous year, equivalent to 37,000 times the holdings of (...) the Library of Congress and that 92.00% of this was on magnetic media, mostly hard disks, while only 0.01% was in print. This SIMS estimate could be wrong by several orders of magnitude and it would still be clear that the era of the printed word is waning rapidly. We are well-advised to pay attention to McLuhan’s suggestionthat electronic media change how we think and how we feel.Sense of place and virtual reality are both inextricably caught up in this cultural-technological upheaval. I have written about the concept of ‘place’ from a phenomenological perspective for many years and have achieved a reasonable understanding of its subtleties, but I have a limited knowledge of digital virtual reality and its technical attributes. Nevertheless, it seems to me that a mutual interaction is at work between what might be called ‘real’ place and virtual places, that digital virtual reality shares characteristics with other electronic media and that our experiences of real places are being changed those same media. This essay explores these issues particularlyfrom the perspective of the distinction between spirit of place and sense of place. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the relevance of virtual worlds for negotiation using the example of Second Life and AltspaceVR; we take into account mindset issues and an avatar’s influence on this process. The concept of negotiation is related here to the concept of a networked society to describe actions undertaken between two or more individuals, groups, and/or organizations. The network is a milieu for negotiating with oneself and with others. Negotiating in a networked space can be an opportunity (...) for self-exploration, subversion, and compensation for the limitations of physical reality, and it also involves background problems and the displacement of power. The term “negotiation” is used in online communities to describe interactions between people who are not physically present but interact with each other through some technical devices, such as the telephone or the Internet. In the waves of technological development, how people organize their lives and behave is a question of convenience. Virtual worlds, in which the human is extended by an avatar (and the avatar by the electronic space), are now being transformed into worlds where the human is just the avatar. The avatar is in the same space the human is in, i.e., in the physical world. This transformation (in fact, a paradigm shift) involves changing the habits of users, who are now adopting new habits in the form of negotiating the physical world with the values and habits of the virtual world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Creating a Learning Space That Is Virtual and ExperientialBette E. Schneiderman (bio)The final product of the Rembrandt Project will be a Web site that is intended primarily for use by middle and high school teachers and their students. It is a celebration of Rembrandt’s work in the contexts of his time, place, and culture and all that may emanate from them. A special feature of the site is (...) the integration of art, aesthetic, and social studies education. Other articles in this issue address the rich content of the project’s work, that is, the artworks themselves, their contextual grounding, and the development of skills that maximize learning. This article looks at the creation of a learning space as a home for the development of the project. It explores issues related to learning spaces and features some of the technologies that can be used within them.The Rembrandt Project will not be a Web site that merely flattens images on a computer screen or conveys facts about Rembrandt and his oeuvre. Rather, it is a portal to a learning place with online features and opportunities for learners to have transformative experiences. Learning may occur online in electronic conversations, in opportunities to view and respond to reproductions in collections that cannot be visited in person, and in the creation and display of learners’ products. Learning is facilitated by access to a range of resources and people. Numerous announcements of activities, events, and products will be posted on the site. Some individuals will work in the space of the works themselves while others might undertake learning activities in museums, galleries, and private homes. In some cases special programs will highlight certain works and relate them to the project. Images of places in the Netherlands will also be presented with accompanying learning opportunities for those who may wish to see the paintings in person or simply ponder their influence from afar. All participants will be encouraged to share creations and reflections on the site. [End Page 38]To provide a sense of what this article is about, three cases are presented, each with two scenarios and a sample online discussion. The purpose of these cases is to draw readers into the experience of a virtual learning space before discussing contemporary learning communities, learning spaces, and technologies. The cases will show how to develop lively democratic conversation that makes communal learning possible. Participants can be of all kinds, from experts to those who simply want to learn. They can be located anywhere and participate at whatever time suits them best.Case A: Two ScenariosScenario 1: Viewing a Masterwork by RembrandtStanding before a work by Rembrandt you are drawn into its space. If you have viewed a Rembrandt in the past, recall your experience. If not, perhaps you might want to travel to a place that has one of his works or access some of his images online.1 Or you might think about a work of art that aroused your interest and prompted you to ponder its import and ask questions. Perhaps you returned to the work many times, experiencing it more deeply and differently upon each visit. What is it, specifically, about the encounter that resulted in a satisfying experience? And what changed the moment you viewed the work in a book reproduction, a slide, or a digitized image on a computer? In pursuing its purposes, the Rembrandt Project explores ways multiple skills can help maximize the experience of a wide range of works both online and off. Case A, Scenario 1, will set the stage for an experience with the work itself.Scenario 2: Viewing a Masterwork OnlineSelect a major work by Rembrandt online.2 What makes experiencing this image worthwhile, despite the fact that certain aspects cannot be captured in this flat digitized space? Upon reflecting on these scenarios, thoughts about experiencing the work may be recorded and discussed with others.3Case B: Two ScenariosScenario 1: An Experience of a LandscapeImagine wandering through an open field, tingled by a gentle breeze, warmed by the sun, refreshed by the aromas of moist grasses, mixed flowers, and the woody smells of trees. A village, visible... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:If “Reality is the Best Metaphor,” It Must Be VirtualMarguerite R. Waller (bio)What is the search for the next great compelling application but a search for the human identity?—Doug Coupland, Microserfs... we can look forward to a richly textured and complex cyberspace, where we are at all times human, and can become bits of pixel dust flying through a virtual landscape.—3-D, multiuser, interactive, on-line virtual reality producer“Avatars (...) are Next,” the June 1996 issue of Wired announces on its cover, above a glossy foldout of Bill Gates in bathing trunks floating on a lemon yellow air mattress in a sensuous Hockney-blue swimming pool. “Mr. Bill goes Hollywood! Special Gatesfold Issue,” reads the caption underneath the (photomontaged) naked torso. The United States Congress’s attempt in February 1996 to conceptualize the Internet as an incitement to indecent sexual conduct (in Section 507 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the so-called Computer Decency Act) is clearly the lampooned subtext of this juxtaposition of sexualized body with the concept of the avatar. The antithesis of sensuous, avatars are bandwidth-conserving, virtual figures that take the place of users’ physical bodies in the three-dimensional, interactive, multiuser virtual environments that software developers in 1996 insist will be the telos of the development of the World Wide Web. The Wired cover implies that the nerd community finds Congress’s association of digital media with sex ridiculous (however flattering they may find it to be constructed as sexually dangerous). Not unusually, sexuality is being invoked by the state as a justification for extending its own reach (and the corporate interests it represents).But the sex/gender politics of Net free speech advocates are not necessarily more progressive. As feminist commentator Laura Miller argues in “Women and Children First: Gender and the Settling of the Electronic Frontier,” the metaphor of a frontier beyond the jurisdiction of Congress, deployed by opponents of federal regulation, draws upon a conventional construction of gender that threatens to reinscribe women as victims, reinforcing “the power imbalance between the sexes, with its roots in the concept of women as property, constantly under siege and requiring the vigilant protection of their male owners” [53]. The unintended consequence of this conceptualization, she worries, is that “the threat of regulation is built into the very mythos used to conceptualize the Net by its defenders” [50].My worry, therefore, embraces both sides of the debate over free speech on the Net. The skirmish between Big Brother and the software pioneers seems to be shaping up rhetorically as a classic fraternal competition “between men” (Sedgwick). We may read it as a contest between fundamentally congruent “male” subject positions, both of which incline to disempower “female” subject positions and both of which stand to increase their [End Page 90] own political and economic capital by the appearance of a conflict. The power-producing relationality at play in this turf war, however, simultaneously threatens to subvert the claims of each position to its own, independent ontology. Both parties, therefore, can be expected compulsively to deny their relational status. John Perry Barlowe insists, in his “Declaration of Independence in Cyberspace”: “Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are based on matter. There is no matter here.”It is this more subtle metaphysical issue, the occlusion of relation, implicated in but not reducible to, the constructions of sexuality and gender deployed by both Netizens and Congresspeople, that I find the most pressing issue in designs, uses, and discussions of cyberspace. I will argue that, in fact, the current wave of Internet development (both practically and discursively) is in some sense driven by a desire to make cyberspace safe for essentialist subjectivities of whatever ideological/political persuasion. I will unfold this argument in terms of a certain notion of addiction. My interest is not “cyberaddiction” per se, in the sense of individuals who spend what they or their associates consider too much time on-line, but rather the construction of cyberspace—both rhetorically and electronically—as a clean, clear realm in which we can transcend positionality while remaining (or becoming more fully) “ourselves.” I am not, that... (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between the image and the time in which we live. In the first part, we critically engage with the image as a concept. The second part introduces the concept of imagotron, a conceptual symbiosis that defines the relationship between the image and electronics. This is illustrated by two manifestations of the imagotron: the hypercube and the hologram. The final part recapitulates the significance of the image in relation to technological developments and virtual reality.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mobility, Portability, and PlacelessnessJoseph Kupfer (bio)Introduction: A Danger of Electronically Mediated ExperienceA few months ago I was sitting in a Chicago airport, waiting to make my connecting flight. Everywhere I looked, people were talking on cell phones, but the man across from me had gone one better. He had a cell phone and a laptop computer. He was talking on a conference call with two people who were at (...) two different locations as they edited a document that appeared on his laptop. It was a contract that they would soon e-mail to yet a fourth individual for her agreement. In the midst of the conferring, the man across from me broke from the contract to look up something on an Internet Web site. He was able to access data that was needed for the contract work. There is no doubt something astonishing and wondrous about four people hooked up, converging on a document that exists—well, where? Nowhere yet, except in that fanciful ether called cyberspace. Although we need to describe this dimension in familiar language, we realize that the term is just a metaphor. There is no space in cyberspace and no time either for that matter.The portability of information, documentation, and communication enabled the man in the airport to work with people in different places to edit a contract that they would then electronically send to a fourth person. The portability facilitated the individual's mobility since he did not have to be in a particular location to create the document and discuss it with others. The man could have been anywhere. He just happened to be in an airport. But the fact that he, and presumably his colleagues as well, could have been in a car or a park, at home or in a restaurant, rendered the actual place in which he worked—the airport—irrelevant. He did not have to pay attention to his physical environment and probably did not wish to. He was absorbed in his electronically fabricated environment comprised of information, voices, and documents. [End Page 38]As such activity becomes more commonplace, this man and the rest of us become detached from our physical surroundings. When these environments become irrelevant to what we are doing, they will lose meaning for us and we will cease to inhabit them in any meaningful way. Anywhere is nowhere. Obviously, the electronic age of cyberspace provides enormous benefits, and I do not wish to minimize its advantages or seem overly pessimistic. Rather, I wish to call attention to what we risk losing in the hope that awareness of what is at stake can forestall the loss. Just as over-reliance on air travel can undermine our sense of movement through space and the aesthetic of such movement, so too can over-reliance on virtual, electronic connections erode our connection to actual physical places. The more electronically mediated activity replaces place, the more we become dis-placed.In what follows I sketch three dimensions of loss that accompany this exciting new electronic connectedness. With loss of place, with placelessness, we are deprived of the aesthetic experiences particular places provide. Second, we lose touch—with our bodies and other people. Last, we lose a sense of place altogether. Our entire way of being in the world may undergo such a radical change that we foreclose important aspects of our humanity and with it corresponding aesthetic appreciations.Electronic Displacement, Traditional Distance Communication, and Previous Revolutions in MobilitySeveral years ago I wrote about the loss of distinctive places as a result of homogeneity in architecture. The sameness of design in restaurants, motels, sport stadiums, homes, and malls yielded a loss of regionality and locality in our built environment. But these were the result of changes within a pervasive dimension of life—architecture or the built environment. Even if the restaurant, motel, or mall looked the same as others, we nevertheless were functioning within a recognizable spatio-temporal frame. We were aware of it as such and even took some comfort in the familiarity. Americans especially liked the idea of no surprises: the Holiday Inn in Topeka, Kansas, looked and felt and smelled the same as... (shrink)

Electronic sports and other variants of ‘digital sports’ have increased in popularity all over the world and may even come to challenge hegemonic concepts of sport. More relevant than the apparent opposition between ‘physical’ and ‘non-physical’ is the question what kind of embodiment is manifested within virtual environments. In this paper, we argue that eSports do require the learning and performance of motor skills and that embodiment within a virtual environment may be considered playful or even athletic. The (...) type of skills that might be tested can even be considered fundamental movement skills. Under appropriate educational supervision, with knowledge of the game, eSports can be utilized for the development of specific elements of digital literacy. Although motor skills are a defining characteristic of eSports, we do not argue that eSports should be integrated within PE. These arguments have not so much to do with the status of physicality present, but with differences in t... (shrink)

Electronic sports and other variants of ‘digital sports’ have increased in popularity all over the world and may even come to challenge hegemonic concepts of sport. More relevant than the apparent opposition between ‘physical’ and ‘non-physical’ is the question what kind of embodiment is manifested within virtual environments. In this paper, we argue that eSports do require the learning and performance of motor skills and that embodiment within a virtual environment may be considered playful or even athletic. The (...) type of skills that might be tested can even be considered fundamental movement skills. Under appropriate educational supervision, with knowledge of the game, eSports can be utilized for the development of specific elements of digital literacy. Although motor skills are a defining characteristic of eSports, we do not argue that eSports should be integrated within PE. These arguments have not so much to do with the status of physicality present, but with differences in t... (shrink)

This electronic document serves as a guide on how to get a LAMP stack running on a Google Compute Engine virtual machine instance running Debian.