The first literature review is concerned about the literature of the computer mediated systems to provide a virtual reality. This is not, of course, directly requisite of the Internet itself, although the Internet is the place whereby a great deal of virtual reality activity and research occurs. The key questions in this review is to what degree does virtual simulate or elaborate on “real” reality, what psychological predilictions arise from the environment of virtual reality and two elaborate probable tendancies based on the scale and character of the technology. In the first instance, the phenomological perspective of Don Ihde has particular utility. In the second, the semoitic and psychoanalytic elaborations of Zoe Sophia. In the final instance, the analytical categories of Lewis Mumford has particular utility. For the purposes of this review, virtual reality refers to both those simulations and models of physical reality as well as simulartions and models of social reality.
As with all literature reviews in this chapter, each text is reviewed here with a standard template. Firstly, an author and text introduction is provided. Following this, a synopsis of the text, and an application of the methodology to the critical issues of Internet community formation. This includes a comparison of the claims by the author with the specific research papers. The review concludes with an evaluation of the various texts and their contribution to this debate. Concluding the reviews is a synthetic evaluation and determination of the review objectives.
GURPS Cyberpunk, Lloyd Blankenship
[Lloyd Blakenship, GURPS Cyberpunk, Steve Jackson Games, 1990]
The simulation game supplement, GURPS Cyberpunk, has a special place in Internet history. During Operation Sundevil the office of Steve Jackson Games was raided on the basis that the supplement was "a handbook for computer crime". All material relating to product was seized, including extensive third party playtester notes [FN: Including those submitted by myself and Chris Stronach from Swancon XV]. The case for Steve Jackson Games was taken up by the Electronic Freedom Frontier and was eventually published, with damages awarded to the company. Further, the author of GURPS Cyberpunk, Lloyd Blankenship, has been identified as Mentor of the hacker group Legion of Doom.
GURPS - Generic Universal Roleplaying System - was first released in 1986. It's objective was to provide a realistic, yet flexible role-playing simulation. Role-playing games mesh simulation and narrative aspects, usually with a speculative fiction setting. An improvised script is developed by the participants who are tested against the mechanics of the game system. Often this results in an emphasis of narrative over simulation or vice versa. GURPS attempted to do both, and often combined the narrative elements in the game mechanics.
The GURPS Basic Set provides extensive procedures and interpretative notes on character creation (attributes, advantages and disadvantages, skills), equipment, character development, action resolution, tactical conflict, injuries and illness, gameworlds (genres, technology), animals, flight and speculative fiction rules for psionics and magic. GURPS Cyberpunk provides contextual notes and new rules for character creation, a detailed list of technology and effects, netrunning (differentiated by "realistic" computer rules and the speculative rules of cyberspace) and cyberpunk world design.
In general, RPGs have only received minimal attention by the academic community. Indeed, their computerized development, Multi-User Domains, seems to have received more attention than RPGs themselves. This is a little unusual given both the emphasis on simulation (both physical and sociological phenomenology), speculative narratives (literature), and the popularity of the hobby among university students. Nevertheless, there is ample avenues for analysis of RPGs in general, and GURPS Cyberpunk in particular. Firstly, analysis is invited on RPGs are simulations and a means of modelling. Secondly, the historical attachments to wargaming and historical fiction. Finally, the social utility of roleplaying, especially the potential for education and literary analysis. These three avenues are, of course, directly related to the objectives enunciated in the introduction to this section.
In terms of simulation, the general frame of analysis can be derived from Raser:
"A simulation is a special kind of model, and a model is a special way of expressing theory... A theory is a set of statements about some aspect of reality, a present reality or a predicted reality. A theory attempts to describe the components of that reality and specify the nature of the relationship among those components."
[John Raser, Simulation and Society, Allan and Bacon, Boston, 1969, p30]
Of all the various Rags that are, or have been in print (there are over two hundred), GURPS is the most comprehensive as a model of reality. Whilst many other systems used their own language and mechanisms for scale and movement, GURPS quite deliberately chose yards, seconds and so forth. Note only did this make "real world" translations easier (especially for technological items), it also allowed extensive "reality checking". In most aspects, the relationship of the game simulation is an effective approximation of physical reality.
The speculative fiction setting of GURPS Cyberpunk add a level of complexity, which of advanced technologies such as cybernetics and cyberspace. By and large, the supplement does not utilise material available from contemporary studies in advanced prosthetic technologies. Indeed, problems were evident as the system clearly buckled as cybernetics equated to natural advantages: it became obvious that, in the cyberpunk future, all the natural abilities in the world will be no alternative to naked purchasing power.
The work on computer systems was exacting, not suprisingly given the author's background. A logarithmic scale of computing complexity is used, which is an elegant way of relating software and hardware. The simulation of various networks and access levels is also more is based on "real world" systems and is thus more accurate than any other RPG. A strange twist occurs on the simulation of cyberspace itself occurs however. In this realm, icon and environmental interfaces are considered easier to use than marquee (text-based) system. Whilst initially this seems counter-intuitive (every hacker knows that a text based operating system is faster than a GUI), but with a mental-machine meld it is at least a coherent narrative.
In terms of the historical attachments of roleplaying games to wargaming and speculative fiction, GURPS and the supplement GURPS Cyberpunk offer further confirmation. The RPG industry was initiated by Dave Arneson the early 1970s when the civilian wargame industry, influenced by the popularity of fantasy literature, was moved to a unit scale of one in a fantasy environment. As the industry developed so did the "realism" from the wargaming aspect and the "narrative" from the fantasy aspect. As previously mentioned, GURPS is one of the most advanced RPGs and include narrative aspects, such as character personality, as part of the game system.
As a model, GURPS uses a normative theory of narrative simulation, that is social and mental advantages and disadvantages are meshed. This causes some problems, for example, the value of the mental disadvantage delusion is not dependent on the veracity of the delusion but on social perception. In terms of "wargaming realism", GURPS is perhaps one of the first games to include a high degree of realism (second by second tactical resolution) along with a standard and gratuitous attention to detail, even if this is not as a great percentage of the total product as some systems.
The supplement GURPS Cyberpunk offers an adequate reflection of cyberpunk narratives in the game system. New character traits, appropriate to the genre, are introduced particularly relating to variations to identity (alternate, temporary, none, secret, reputation) and health (amnesia, cyber-rejection, terminal illness). Casualisation of the workforce is introduced, as is the possibility of an effective split between the system steering media of wealth and income (albeit only for purchasing cybernetics).
As an example of a roleplaying simulation, the fundamental theory that drives virtual reality research, GURPS Cyberpunk is a particularly good example of the prospects and limitations of such an endeavour. It is expressed as a total system, a total narrative that is both generic and universal, providing a complete background to contingent physical actions – the simulation of social and mental realities are, in comparison, not particularly well developed, even if they are attempted. As a simulation model rather than a reality sui generis, it provides little in terms of actually being a embodiement or hermeneutic technology, except through Multi-User Domains where “physical” actions are replicated with an acceptable degree of accuracate simualtion. In reference to alterity technologies however, there is a stronger link – the simulation system itself provides an identifiable alternative reality in which alternative characters – themselves systematically determined – become the second (or third, or fourth etc) self.
Although roleplaying simulations are not a technology in themselves (although the are when the simulation is programmed as Multi-User Domains), the semiotic and psychoanalytic elaborations provided by Zoe Sophia are still an appropriate methodology. As already mentioned, roleplaying simulations present themselves as a total narrative, which can include as well as the simulated abractions of physical reality, social and individual world systems as well. Whilst many have made an admirable abstraction of physical reality, the abstractions of social and individual worlds are hardly at the level of a credible simulation. The lack of transparency in these simulation simulations elucidates the unjustified neuroses of mastery and narcassistic fetishism – it is a matter of common knowledge of player reactions when disaster befalls their characters in such simulation environments. Further elaboration on this point however as more appropriate in the literature review on virtual communities.
Within the framework of Mumford, popular productions of roleplaying simulations are certainly within the analytic type of decentralized, human-scale and democratic technics. Nevertheless, this popular interpretation of simulation is by no means the only version. Institutional bodies, particularly the military and business, have been involved in the production of such models for decades (indeed, the author quoted above, John Raser was actually involved in their design) indicative through bodies such as a the Modelling & Simulation Analysis Center [www.msiac.dmso.mil], the National Simulation Center (www-leav.army.mil/nsc). Unlike the decentralized and highly varied aims in the popular model, these models have assumptions based on their own institutional and systematic axioms and are therefore truncuated in their ability to be a virtual reality.
Cyberspace: First Steps, Mike Benedikt (ed)
[Mike Benedikt (ed), 1991, Cyberspace: First Steps, MIT Press]
Taking Gibson's portrayal of cyberspace as a serious benchmark, this text is fifteen essays taken from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. The introduction, using Karl Poppers' three world theory describes cyberspace as 'world 3' (social) with materiality stripped away. Four major threads can be identified in the text; language and mythology, history of architecture (electronic and aesthetic engineering), and commercial concerns.
Six essays are concerned with the thread on language and consciousness. Thomas (chapter 3) proposes that going "online" constitutes a modern rite of passage. Heim (chapter 5) looks at "The Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace", and claims that cyberspace represents Plato's ideal forms and this will deliver us to pleasure as Plato and the Gnostics claim that Eros drives us to Logos and the matrix will be networked and coordinated by a Leibniz-derived Central Infinite Monad. An underlying psychoanalytic contradiction is noted however; the alieness of purity and perfectibility to humans is contrary to humanity as perfect information to erotic sensuality; both the conclusion of Neuromancer and the Zionites are presented as evidence, at least in the semiotic sense.
Also of note following the language and consciousness thread, Stone (chapter 6) reviews phenomenological body horizons and applies a psychoanalytic critique of the cyborg. Novak (chapter 8) provides a description of hypertext and compares it to the move away from the natural to the abstract in artists such a Maelvich, Kadinsky, Klee, and Mandarian. Wexleblat's "Giving Meaning to Place: Semantic Spaces", (chapter 9) develops an unnecessarily complex linguistic approach to data structures.
Whilst there are only two essays which contribute to the second thread (the history of architecture - electronic and aesthetic engineering), the do represent a theoretical core of the text. The two essays are Benedikt's own "Cyberspace: Some Proposals" (Chapter 7) and Bickim's "Virtual Worlds: No Interface to Design" (Chapter 12), which look at respectively the theory of cyberspace modeling and current hardware. Benedikt claims to seek the axioms of cyberspace and establishes three principles: Maximal Exclusion, Maximal Object Identity, and Indifference. With cyberspace generated through "voxels" (three dimensional "volume pixels"), Benedikt argues that Indifference (open user alteration) is essential lest the virtual universe become like Gibson's "simstim" industry. This is, of course, a position that makes no causal programming difference, but is true to "the hacker ethic" and the claim of improved programming standards through democraticisation. Ultimately however, Benedikt suggests that: "Anything less than infinite computing power will deliver less sensory realism than ordinary reality, and less than we are apt to want". [FN: p191]
Taking a contrary view, Bickim's essay first compares the production of three dimensional objects on a screen as analogous to a glass-bottomed boat, and with stereophonic screens like snorkeling. Despite this amusing mental image, the core of Bickim's essay is to compare phenomenological "reality" with currently available technologies. Particularly that from Lanier's VPL Industries with benchmarks. For example, visual reality is estimated to consist of 80 million polygons at 30+ frames per second, whereas the contemporary personal computer could manage 500 flat shaded polygons at 7 frames per second and VPL's RBI can provide fifteen thousand shaded polygons at 20 frames per second. Given rates of improvement, Bickim considers virtual reality not only quantifiable, but also achievable.
The commercial thread is most fully approached by the essays of Morningstar and Farmer's (chapter 10), and Pruit and Barrett (chapter 14). The former is effectively a descriptive commentary of the production of a commercial entertainment product, namely Lucasfilm's "Habitat". Somewhat incongruous, it fails to provide expected practical examples of programming contingencies. The latter argument attempts to derive a telos to the contemporary corporate workplace following both the expectations of Neuromancer, and the influence of neoliberal economic theory. Their future is one of skill obsolescence; computer mediated education, individual responsibility for health and welfare, transient contract work, and corporate nondisclosure.
"Cyberspace: First Steps", with the test of some time, is somewhat scattered in utility. The noted psychoanalytic and cultural inquiry essays provide a useful base for further interpretation. The scientific theory (Benedikt) when compared with technical standards (Bricken) also provides direction. However, the real point for conflict resolution comes from the competing claims of Benedikt's Principle of Indifference as a necessary condition for cyberspace, and the future of work described by Pruit and Barrett. Ultimately this becomes a political question as claims for user access to a public cyberspace and the corporate imperatives are competing. The political economy of such competition is, as cursory empirical evidence will attest, is being resolved in favour of the latter.
Attempting to apply a phenomenology of technology to this text poses some difficulty as the overwhelming majority of it is not concerned with phenomenological benchmarks. There are exceptions, such as Benedikt and Bickim's essays, with the former reiterating the concepts of sensory extension, sensory location and transparency and the latter providing a somewhat optimistic account of potential technological benchmarks. There is a notable lack of description, let alone elaboration, of alterity or background technics, except if one wishes to account Pruit and Barrett's advocacy of universal neoliberal economic theory in that regard (they seem to have missed the point that William Gibson's world was a dystopia, not a utopia).
With regards to semiotic and psychoanalytic interpretations the text provides a much richer opportunity. Although difficult to follow for those untrained in philosophical psychoanalysis, Heim's essay is a surprisingly cogent affirmation of Sofia's semiotics and psychoanalysis of technology. Virtual reality is presented as a idealized narrative totality, a self-contained and compliant second self and alternate world of perfect knowledge and perfect erogeny whose impossible ideal are the seeds of it's own neurotic desires. In comparison to this virtual reality metanarrative, Stone's essay as a critique of the cyborg, emphasizes the same semiotic position and neurotic tendancies suggested by Sofia.
With an emphasis on the semiotic and psychoanalysis interpretations of technology and with Benedikt and Bricken's essays more concerned with the mintae of detail and the conceptual level, there is unfortunately, very little to go on to apply Mumford's hypothesis of democratic, individual-scale technologies versus authoritarian, institutional-scale technologies, with the possible concern of the panoptican-like fears of the Central Infinite Monad, which, in the decentralized and distributed world of the Internet is not an issue at all. However, the point is made as these many of the authors in this collection conflate virtual reality with the idea of a global computer network at the very least the possibility of an authoritarian global computer network is raised, if not confirmed.
Virtual Reality, Howard Rheingold
A colourful cybespace personality, Howard Rheingold has been interested in mental faculties and computer technologies for some years. In the former field he has authored “Talking Tech” (1982) with Willis Harman, “Higher Creativity” (1984), “The Cognitive Connections” (1986) with Howard Levine, “Excursions to the Far Side of the Mind” (1988) and “Exploring the World of Dreaming” (1990) with Stephen LaBerge . He has also authoried the amusing “They Have A Word For It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases (1988). In the latter field, Rheingold is the author of “Tools for Thought” (1984), “Virtual Reality” (1991), “Virtual Community” (1993), edited of the The Whole Earth Review and editor in chief for the The Millenium Whole Earth Catalog (1994).
Rheingold's Virtual Reality, described by the author as “my odyssey in the world of artificial experience, from simulated battlefields in Hawaii to robotics laboratories in Tokyo, garage inventors in Great Britain, and simulation engineers in the south of France”, preceeds the more popular Virtual Community by three years. This populist relationship can be understood. In 1991 the Internet was still overwhelmingly non-commercialised. Further, social issues are more lay accessible than the usual technical considerations of virtual reality. Finally, the latter text was considerably shorter, a seemingly essential quality in the postmodern milieu where the temporary is more important than the tome.
The initial, and lengthiest chapter, is a series of anecdotal tales of the author's experience with various VR gadgets and meeting the people involved in the industry. Key concepts are introduced, such as the comparison between Gibson's cyberspace and VR, VR as a simulation tool, and the idea of transparency in the technical interface. Even a potential crisis is suggested (by Frederick Brookes): that there is an underlying tension in VR between "realism" and "truthfulness", due to interface considerations. It is a poignant comment, receiving only minimal attention in the text.
The following four chapters (Part II: Breaking the Reality Barrier) attempt to review the technology along analytical themes. Unfortunately, these have no a priori means of establishment so the reviews tend to overlap considerably. Initially, VR is described as a convergence of computer technology and the various "illusions" of film and theatre. Computer technologies receive a chapter of their own as a VR precursor, with special emphasis on GUIs, icon-driven systems, and other means of "user-friendliness". The development of Sketchpad by Ivan Sutherland in the early 1960s is particularly noted as the most important invention in the industry.
The history of computer interface systems is complemented by contemporary (that is, 1991) research directions, such as "goggles and gloves", "spatial data management systems", "move maps", "head mounted displays"). Interesting comments are made by Kruger over the concept of "artificial reality" and the primacy of response in the interface. This position, of course, begs comparison with the Brookes' concerns, but their differences are not elaborated.
The core of the book is in Part III, consisting of nine chapters. Entitled "The Reality-Industrial Complex" it reviews key government and private industries involved in VR technology, with NASA being identified as the pivotal government body. Once again however, the text remains anecdotal rather than critical. NASA may indeed be the "boostrap" VR industry, but its systematic relationship with the VR industry is not identified, let alone elaborated. The reviews of the private industry remain in a similar style; technical and individual surface descriptive. The stylistic wordsmith Jaron Lanier of VPL industries is, of course, given particular attention.
An opportunity for critique arises in the review of the one hundred and forty companies that make up the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR). With an annual budget of fifty million (presumably US dollars, c1990), ATR is considered by Rheingold to behave in an international and co-operative manner, more like an independent higher education institution than a consortium of private sector companies. With their centrepiece in Kansai Science City, Japan, Rheingold makes the insightful comparison of ATR as a 1990s version of Parc Xerox and the research orientation of APRA.
The critical comparative issue is that like Parc Xerox and APRA, ATR has a very close working relationship with NTT (Nippon Telephone and Telegraph). The specific conditions that NTT operative under (interventionist telecommunications and infrastructure planning, high bandwidth) has allowed serious consideration of combining telecommunication and multimedia technologies. Some emphasis is placed on the comparative use of English as lingua franca and the Japanese use of kanji pictograms as a motivating factor, but it is by no means conclusive.
The next four chapters concentrate on industry applications of VR technologies. It begins with a discussion of remote industrial applications (Marvin Minsky's "telepresence"), either human moderated or through "telerobotics". "Tele-existence", the use of VR technologies to aid those with physical disabilities is also reviews, once again in a manner that is primarily surface descriptive. An interesting tangent occurs in the text when Rheingold, rather suddenly, engages in Nieztsche's polemic between Dionysian an Appollinian aesthetic motivations leading to a description of Multi-User Domains and "hombrew" VR.
The final two chapters make up Part IV, Virtual Reality and the Future. The first chapter, "Teledildonics and Beyond", refers initially to a 1974 invention which converted sound into a tacticle, erotogenic effect. Rheingold considers the future effect of VR along this trajectory and notes more contemporary research, such as "smartskin", a lightweight sensor-reflector mesh, and the more prosaic popularity of telephone sex services. Following the traditional theme, Rheingold moves from virtual sex to virtual drugs. With Leary's and Garcia's endorsement of virtual reality as "electronic lsd" ( a front-page article title in the Wall Street Journal), a rather sober, if brief, consideration is given to virtual reality technology as a modern mechanism of handling rituals of ex-stasis.
Further concerns are made with the potential of "virtual warfare", through remote presence, semiautonomous weapons or even autonomous weapons. The role of VR in the "global information economy" is also reviewed, particularly the electronic representation of capital and its fluidity as its dominant motif. Of particular interest is the degree of international foreign exchange transactions; 23 times the US GNP in 1986 alone. Factors noted leading to this situation include the removal of the Bretton Woods agreement leading currencies to be valued relative to each other, and the communications technological transfer from teletype to computers.
Too much is reviewed in the second-last chapter, leaving the last chapter in a state of paralysation. Entitled "Cyberspace and Human Nature", it attempts to draw a long view of the artistic endeavour from cave paintings in southern France to contemporary VR. The view, without mimetic considerations, is not conclusive by any means. Indeed, as a chapter which attempts to be more theoretical than descriptive, it serves more as example of how Rheingold's Virtual Reality does not deal in the difficult theoretical considerations that should arise from a review of the VR industry, its spokespeople, and the technologies themselves.
Rheingold's VR emphasis is on the background phenomenological-type, although these are invariably described according to the time, as non-convergent, non-transparent technologies. VR googles and gloves, for example, are not described as a technology that co-exists with the tactile VR systems or with the extensive telepresence industrial applications. Hermeutic virtual reality technologies are likewise provide significant description from the GUI for computer systems to the military and space industry information gathering devices. Likewise the notion of alterity technologies as a virtual reality device – automated programs according to the values of the user do not seem to be a significant feature within Rheingold's account of virtual reality (except for the briefly described autonomous weapon systems). However, to give particular credit where credit is due, Rheingold seemed very aware and quite early in the popular understanding, of the transformation of various financial systems to a background phenomenological-type through the conversion of the physical representation of capital to an electronic one.
Attempting to derive a semiotic or psychoanalytic interpretation of virtual reality from Rheingold's Virtual Reality proves is somewhat difficult. Apart froom the fact that VR technology was a such a minimal stage at the time this text was written, Rheingold does not delve deeply into the psychological motivations behind VR except in a fairly superficial manner. This is no slight on Rheingold of course – a popular cultural anthropology is being provided, not a psychanalytic evaluation. Furthermore – and something that will become increasingly evident throughout this review – most psychological studies of virtual reality deal with the social interactions of text-based Multi-User Domains which are considered only in passing. Nevertheless, the text does refer to the overriding concern of 'mastery' within the context of virtual reality as a total system.
When comparing Rheingold's text to the analytic types developed by Mumford is both noted – an achievement in itself – and confirmed. Personal-scale technologies are interpreted as distributed and democratic and orientated towards the common wealth and benefit of individuals, whereas those that are large scale are within a institutional and systematic locus and are designed for functional control at best or are antithetical to human living at worst. Rheingold is ambivalent of which of the two types of virtual reality has the better prospects in the short or the long term. A fair intrepretation is that the culture of the democratic and personal-scale type is enthusiastic, yet the sheer resources of the institutional systems, the degree of their ability to globalize (such as the international ATM and foreign exchange networks) and their destructive power (e.g., military technologies) is impressive beyond comprehension, which is of course, exactly as Mumford would expect. An interesting negative confirmation of the hypothesis is the relative lack of succes and funding of ATRI International, heralded by Rheingold as the new Parc Xerox.
[
This statement is however, tempered by the excellent work they've achieved with the tongue operated motorised wheel-chair for quadraplegics.
Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International http://www.atr.co.jp/index_e.html
]
Silicon Mirage: The Art and Science of Virtual Reality, Steve Aukstaklinis and David Blatner Edited by Stephen N. Roth
[Steve Aukstakalnis, David Blatner (1992) Silicon Mirage: The Art and Science of Virtual Realty, Peachpit Press Edited by Stephen N. Roth
]
“Silicon Mirage”, the text least orientated to a non-technical audience in this review section - and apparently an exceedingly rare text - develops an advanced theoretical model of "imaging" and compares different technical pathways to this model. It begins by recognising Jaron Lanier of coining the term "virtual reality", and of examples in science fiction such as Aldous Huxley's three dimension movies – feelies and William Gibson's cyberspace. Ivan Sutherland is given recognition for the founder of contemporary research and for having participated in its development for over four decades.
[
Aukstakalnis has authored a number of technical papers on virtual reality including:
Aukstakalnis, S. (1993). Go With the Flow: Visualizing Complex Waterway Designs with Virtual Reality. CADalyst, 10(8), 56-58.
Aukstakalnis, S. (1993). Out of This World: the Fundamentals of Immersive Virtual Reality. CADalyst, 10(8), 37-44.
Aukstakalnis, S. (1993). Too Hot to Handle: Using CAD, Virtual Reality and Telepresence to Manage Nuclear Waste. CADalyst, 10(8), 46-50.
Aukstakalnis, S., Couvillion, B., Gaither, K., Moorhead, R., Nations, S., Vickery, R., Flynn, P., Fox, D. N., Smedstad, O. M., Wallcraft, A., & Williams, D. (1995). Interactive Ocean Modeling and Visualization. In Proceedings of the Supercomputing '95, (pp. unpaginated). : ACM.
]
The authors consider that virtual reality technology has four essential uses: modeling, communication, control, and arts and entertainment. With a theory that corresponds with phenomenology's concept of 'transparency' in technology a particular subset - that of "immersion" - is introduced. Immersion itself has two functions: accuracy in computing and realism to the user. To Austaklinis and Blatner, virtual reality equates with degrees of immersion.
The initial problems are position and orientation. Attempts have been made to calculate position and orientation of a subject through mechanical, ultrasonic, magnetic, optical and image extractive mechanisms. The first requires the subject to hang with attachments, like a puppet, with respective loss in detail. Ultrasonic provides the opportunity for triangulation, which whilst flexible is not precise. Toys, like the Nintendo Power Glove, use a electromagnetic approach, which have problems with magnetic field disturbances, latency and accuracy. An optical approach, providing light emitting diodes to a video to track is precise and potentially of sufficient detail. Finally, image extraction through relayed videos provide the greatest ease for users, but is also the most calculation intensive means.
In regards to optics and imaging devices, the authors theoretically constitute some benchmarks: such as a field of view of two hundred and seventy degrees, with ninety to provide any degree of immersion. Concurring with a generally accepted standard of realism being reached at 40-60 frames per second, the authors currently note that movies operate at 30, and contemporary VR devices can manage 2-15. Current telerobotic eye tracking systems, used by the wheelchair-confined and the military has the potential of a smart HUD system that differentiates high and low focus. The current method baths the eye in low intensity infrared light, which generates an image of the pupil and a bright spot reflecting off the cornea that can be captured by a video camera.
A useful comparison between the cathode-ray tube and liquid quartz display, the former with a high contrast ratio and the latter being inexpensive and low power, is also provided in reviewing imaging devices. With advantage to the latter, they are utilised in the defacto VR standard LEEP (Large Expanse Extra Perspective) stereoscopic goggles. With six lens (three for each eye), the optical set spreads of one hundred and twenty degrees of horizontal and vertical fields, creating a ninety degree field of view Stereoscopic HUDS were first designed by Ivan Sutherland in 1968, and developed by NASA in 1984. The University of North Carolina has developed a set for the US Air Force Institute of Technology with two LCDs in colour. Capabilities of other commercial and monocular HUDs are also examined.
With the difficult immersions of position and vision (target and targeting sense) examined, the text moves to the immersions of 'hearing', 'feeling', and 'recognition'. In regards to 'hearing', the essential considerations are sound localisation (interaural tone and intensity differences), the wave motion of sound, the existence of acoustic shadows, and the focus of sound by consciousness. Computer generated immersive sound is moving from a stereo to three dimensional sound, which requires computer generation rather than prerecording. NASA, it is noted, along with Crystal Ewer Engineering, has developed a convolvotron, an audio digital processor which convolves an analogue sound using head reflector transfer functions to create three dimensional sound effect.
The essential considerations in the immersion of feeling relate to size and sensitivity of objects, which includes the cues of shape texture temperature, and acuity (precision). The authors concur with other research directions, which attempt to reverse engineer feeling immersion through propriocentric feedback - the tactile sensations from muscles and tendon. The Argonne Remote Manipulate (ARM), designed for handling radioactive materials, is noted as the first feeling immersion where these principles could be developed. Recent examples, such as the VPL Dataglove, use feedback for feeling immersion, whereas extensive research by the University of North Carolina reveals force feedback also aids in perceptual immersion.
Recognition immersion refers to the various input interface devices. An initial comparison is between VPLs Dataglove, a combination of sensors, fibre optics, and LEDs, and the Dextrous Hand Master of Exos, which mechanically measures radial-ulnar deviation. Although the design of the latter is considerably 'clunky', it is very precise. Stanford University and the Veterans Medical Center have designed a 'talking glove', a speaking aide for nonvocal deaf, and deaf/blind individuals. VPL's Data-Suit, which collects information from up to fifty joints in the body, is briefly examined, but the clear emphasis is on voice recognition systems. The key recognised issues come from the need of such systems to be trained. Problems are encountered through vocabulary building, appropriate use of words and natural language. It is noted that a significant amount of the work required in voice recognition is being carried out by brokerage houses,
Finally, the authors move to a wide range of practical applications for technologies just described. The primary industries where VR technology is considered useful include architecture and design (eg., CAD, aircrafts, "walk-throughs", acoustic evaluation), the entertainment industry ("Besides the military, the largest investors in virtual reality come from the entertainment sector")[FN: p197], health and medicine (eg., surgical simulation), education (eg., virtual physics, planetary exploration, simulation and training), and financial planning. General administrative and productive efficiencies can be achieved through teleconferencing and telerobotics respectively. The conclusion however notes a minor concern: evidence of virtual nausea, corresponding to motion sickness.
Silicon Mirage, whilst undoubtedly the least well known of the texts reviewed here, is the one of the highest technical standards. Stylistically it did not attempt to derive a popular audience appeal through literary mechanisms (no "story" as such). It does however, provide quite an exacting theory (immersion) for phenomenological benchmarks. It also provides accurate analytic types by which to test for degrees of immersion, acknowledgment of their essential physical concerns, and effective reviews of current standards. Through its neutrality, it has also provides the clearest evidence of the telic inclination of VR technologies from current research directions: first military, second entertainment, and after that health and education. These relative weightings - and their empirical content - provide due warning to any sociology or cultural inquiry into the temptations of virtual reality.
The technical benchmarks and the problems of immersion noted by the authors is more realistic and presented with significantly less fanfare that that provided by, for example, Rheingold. This is to be expected as they are writing to a more technical audience and are less concerned with the anthropology of such devices. There is significantly more elaboration along at least two phenomenological types and problems with the horizonal benchmarks with the attributions to various sense systems used by the authors – position for hermeneutic, virtual sensory feedback for embodiment. Once again, the lack of description of alterity technologies is notable, but surprisingly, the authors do not discuss virtual reality as a totalizing system (i.e., a background technology).
If any psychoanalytic and semiotic interpretation can be derived from this text is is therefore along the embodiment and hermeutic technological types. Without a doubt, with the technical and analytic precision used by the authors, the semiotic typology suggested by Sophia is applied. Those virtual reality technologies designed as an elaboration of the body are described in patial terms and those as information-gathering as an information environment brought together to a single point. With their careful scientific demeanor the authors succesfully avoid expressing flights of fancy which provide feeding material for psychoanalysis – the honest difficulties in reaching benchmarks are in fact indicative of how distant they are from a neurotic approach to such technologies. What must be noted here however, is a degree of fragmentation in failing to describe the alterity (possibly assumed and without comment) or background technological orientations.
With regards to the Mumford hypothesis again we find at least a partial confirmation – those technologies that are designed on the human scale tend to be democratic. An evaluation of institutional scale technologies is not possible in this instance as such technologies are not described. However, in terms of institutional resources, the prevalence of military (control) and entertainment (deception) funding over the human needs of health and education is indicitive of how virtual reality as a technological orientation is being directed in an institutional manner that is contrary to a human emancipatory interest.
War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the High Tech Assault on Reality, Mark Slouka
[Mark Slouka, (1995), War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the High Tech Assault on Reality, Harper Collins, 1995 ]
Mark Slouka, a lecturer of literature and culture at the University of California San Diego, is a humanist voice in a world of technophiles. The initial proposition is that the computerisation of life is like Orson Welles' radio adaption of the H.G. Wells novel which "easily truimphed over common sense <i>and</i> reality." [FN: p6] This event is described as a victory of the electronic over the chemical, or to be particular, the biochemical. According to Slouka, this "victory" is being repeated today with vigor and on an unprecedented scale - if the New York Times 1993 industry estimate of $3.5 trillion is still in the bounds of comprehension. [FP; p11]
Initially, some of the more outlandish claims of the "digerati" (Slouka's term for contemporary technophiles) are targeted. John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the EFF, who claims that the move to "virtual reality" "is less a matter of advantage than inevitability", and Kevin Kelly, the executive editor of Wired magazine who assimilation of humans into a digital hive. Humanist objections are expressed to references to the human body as "meat", to PONA (people of no account), to hyperbole propositions of technological transcendence, and the use of virtual reality technology to military applications. But the main concern is the negative aspects of the virtual reality of computerised life. Which are described as a series of assaults: An assault on identity, an assault on place, and an assault on community.
In regards to the assault on identity, Slouka claims that such an assault leads to a loss of social reality and schizophrenia, the postmodern mental illness Jameson once claimed. A strong case is made of usenet as a forum indicating cultural improverishment rather than the enlightened democratic community suggested by Rheingold. Trivial newsgroups, flame wars, and other weaknesses in the signal-to-noise ratio are highlighted. Text-based virtual realities and computerised roleplaying games are also considered part of the assault on identity. Slouka is particularly critical of the "situations" these have generated (such as “virtual rape”), and indicates interest in associating roleplaying as addictive, damaging to adolescents and as a psychomimetic hallucinogen, "mimicked manifestations of psychosis ... rendered the individual incapable of staying in contact with reality." [FN: p56]
[FN: Jameson, F., in Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism. pp EDIT. Paranoia is described as the mental illness of modernity in comparison]
Concerns with the assault on place are articulated in three ways. Firstly, are quite cleverly, Slouka takes the opportunity to parody the attempts to replace real eroticism with its virtual counterparts, especially in regards to the necessity of proximity. Secondly, in a similar manner to that found in Rheingold, the advent of computer technology inspired paranoia. Thirdly, Slouka notes that the very notion of a world wide ubiquitous computerisation of life is itself a form of totalitarianism. In answer to Microsoft's advertising campaign: "Where to you want to go today?" Slouka's response would be: "To a place without a postcard, to a place without Microsoft". The fact that Microsoft could not provide such a place gives their telos to ensure that it does not exist.
The critique of the assault on community both notes and rejects the concepts of the "information rich" and "information poor". Slouka sees this distinction as being deceptive in an environment which is overwhelmed by information as it obfuscates real divisions in our communities. The potential of the various technologically mediated communities as being replacements for, or even more adaptable than, real communities is likewise belittled. The question is poised, if these communities are so capable then why haven't they managed any serious social or political reform? Once again the species self-hatred of the digerati is identified, but with a different slant:
"A more charitable explanation - noting their lack of artifice, their wide-eyed reformers zeal - might portray the digerati as nothing more than political naïfs: hip, post-modern urbanites - chock-full of partially digested Foucault and crème de Derrida..." p106
These assaults, in their entirety, are all part of a general assault on reality caused by the new computerisation. To put bluntly Slouka's position is, "the digital revolution offers too little and demands too much" [FN:p147]. The alternative, similar to that of Postman, is to break the technological mediation of experience and to engage in reality as it "really" is. The question of whether this is possible for individuals given the normative orientation in contemporary society - not to mention the demands of the social system - is not really adequately addressed. Whilst evidently suffering from an anti-modernist romanticism, Slouka's criticisms in a world of technological and computer obsessive are poignant. The question is whether these benefits of virtual reality are necessary considering the additional complexity that they add to life, and the degree that that they technologically enframe us further from reality, rather than uncovering it.
As a critic, Slouka does not really elaborate on the phenomological expressions of virtual reality. The orientation from the outset is antithetical neither empirical nor experiential, but rather interpretative. The example of criticism of the phenomonlogy of virtual reality eroticism is a case in point. The pardoy and mocking of proximity provides no information of the technical and experiential requirements for people separated by distance to engage in expressions beyond love letters andl listful thoughts. The emphasis rather is to describe how virtual reality replaces “real reality” as a totalizing system. As a university (“sheltered workshops for the intellectually able”) academic Slouka would be of course well aware of how institutional and technological environments can shield one from “real reality”.
Thus, when making semiotic and psychoanalytic interpretations of Slouka's text the analysis is limited to the totalizing effect of virtual reality as a system. However, the text does not uncover neuroses of mastery but rather a cultural critcism of virtual reality and its afficiandos. It is the narrative of virtual reality, the prospects of its inevitability, the technologically-enframed and elaborated mode of consciousness and the community associated with it that Slouka disagrees with. In this regard, Slouka is undoubtably correct – the globalization of the Internet and virtual reality does have a certain degree of inevitability about it. To describe this however as an assault on identity, reality and community whilst only providing aesthetic criticism is hardly helpful.
The core problem for Slouka is that the semiotic criticism of the narrative does not necessarily match the psychoanalytic neurosis of mastery. The reason for this is relatively simple – the Internet and virtual reality are, to use Mumford's terms, distributed, democratic and human-scale. To be sure, it is hardly a perfect example of these features – there are institutional authorities, there are some places that have greater bandwidth access than others, it is not a universal and ubquitous technology – but in comparison to most other technological and institutional systems the relevant performance indicators are far superior. The fundamental point is that Slouka's criticism of virtual reality will remain a literary criticism as long as we as human beings can disconnect, turn off the machines, and step outside.
An Evaluation of Virtual Reality Literature
This evaluation of virtual reality literature is demarcated according to the physical, personal, and social worlds. The three methodological approaches are applied for evaluating the degree that virtual reality can represent and elaborate physical, social and individual reality, the degree that these replications and elaborations are prone to neurotic tendancies, and whether virtual reality technologies are human-centred and democratic or institutional-centred and authoritarian. In addition, this general evaluation brings the concepts of communications technologies and mediative systems described in the initial section of methodology.
More recent research than the literature reviewed here suggests that in terms of providing an accurate simulation that represents and elaborates reality, virtual reality technologies have made some significant advances. Representations, such VOILA (Visuomotor and Orientation Investigations in Long-Duration Astronauts), provide accurate simulations of perception without gravity. Sexual difference in the capacity to model three dimensional objects apparently disappears in virtual reality with a degree of permanence, with particular importance for trauma rehabilitation. Burn patients are being succesfully rehabilited through VR to reduce their subjective pain and fear.
[Tech Talk, MIT News Office, 2000, “Virtual reality is central to group of MIT space station experiments” http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/tt/2000/nov08/vr.html]
[USC Engineering Technology Transfer Center, “A Key Gender Difference Vanishes in Cyberspace, USC News Service, 1988, http://www.usc.edu/dept/engineering/TTC/newsarchives/feb99_virtual.html]
[http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns/dec96/fires5.html]
To be sure, the implementation of realistic virtual reality environments has not been as rapid as researchers first thought – as the degree of detail in VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) shows, reality, not surprisingly, is actually a fairly complex environment. Indeed, as abstractions, the text-based Multi-User Domains still provide the most easily implementable versions of virtual reality although they obviously lack transparency. In the more complex virtual reality environments the slippage between simulation and perception has become notable particularly in the areas of vision (scaling) and touch (clamping methods).
[Robert W. Lindeman, John L. Silbert, James K. Hahn, (undated) Towards Useable VR: An Empirical Study of User Interfaces for Immersive Virtual Environments, Institute of Computer Graphics, George Washington University
Doug A. Bowman, Donald B. Johnson, Larry F. Hodges, Testbed Evaluation of Virtual Environment Interaction Techniques, (undated) Virginia Polytechnic and State University and Georgia Institute of Technology
]
In general terms, the capacity of virtual reality to model in a transparent manner is expensive, time-consuming with marginalutility for society in general, but extremely high utility for the individuals who benefit from it for health reasons and for the institutions who use it for instrumental application of dangerous or expensive (e.g., military) technology. Mass applications of transparent virtual reality seem to be in the immediate future problematic regardless of improvements in computer processing power and conmunications bandwidth simply because of the contextual programming required. On the other hand, application of virtual reality in a deliberately non-transparent manner (i.e., not one which fails due to the imperfections of the technology), such as text-based Multi-User Domains, have proven themselves to be highly capable of providing an abstract virtual reality from which modelling information can be derived. Mass usage of these applications is already available and too a relative degree, evident.
[MUD Connection, http://www.mudconnect.com/, provides an up-to-date list of some several hundred MUDs]
It is in the area of non-transparent virtual reality that most psychological evaluation has occurred. The ovewhelming available evidence to date is that Multi-User Domains, like their pen-and-paper predecessors, provide an opportunity for psychodramatic development of the self, experiments with multiple and decentered selves and hermeneutic understanding of otherness within an environment where the physical dangers of the real world are screened out. The evidence is quite clear that text-based virtual realities increase the equality of participation and individuality of expression. This is not to suggest that there are not social or individual dangers. Available evidence does suggest that there are examples of individuals using virtual reality as a means to escape, rather than elaborate or simulate real reality. Of course, this is a danger in any simulation environment, and one which emphasizes communicative psychodrama is no different – the neurotic tendancies of narcassistic fetishization have greater potential in a technically mediated sense.
[James Sempsey III, (undated), The Theraupetic Potentials of Text-Based Virtual Reality, Temple University, http://www.brandeis.edu/pubs/jove/HTML/v3/sempsey.html
Shirley Turkle, 1995, Life On The Screen: Idenity in the The Age of the Internet, Simon & Schuster.]
[Brenner, Viktor (1997) "Psychology of Computer Use XLVII. Parameters of Internet Use, Abuse, and Addiction: The First 90 Days of the Internet Usage Survey" Psychological Reports 80, 879-882]
The neurotic tendancies that psychologists seem so concerned about in the relatively harmless pursuit of real or imaginaed addiction to communication and virtual journey in alternative realities The importance of these neurotic tendances stands in stark contrast to the subject matter and concerns of decentralized and democratic MUDs. The Heads Up Display truncuates “unnecessary” information in favour of that which has the direct military application. The capacity of such units as an aid to asserting violence, and screening-out the effects of that violence is not to be underestimated. Indeed, there can be little doubt that the capacity of virtual reality as a military force equates with its development as a neurotic influence, where the delusions of mastert, identification, fetishization, and epistemophilia. Weapons are reified with human intelligence (“smart bombs”) but presumably without human morality (will there ever be “good bombs”?). Whilst the functional behaviour and psychology of a military organization is undoubtably improved in the short-term by screening the human agents from the technology and the effects of their agency, in the long-term it is completely unsustainable to assume that these effects will not surface in the form of social criticism or individual trauma. The fundamental problem is that human beings, although technology may enframe and elaborate their experiences, simply cannot escape from themselves.
At this point evaluation of the literature turns to the question of individual versus institutional scaled technologies where the review to date seems to have confirmed the analytic assumptions proposed by Lewis Mumford. However, if Mumford is completely correct, the fact that institutional mediation is always more effective and efficient than that of isolated associations of individuals, no matter how resiliant, suggests that authoritarian technics will inevitably dominate. Now this is clearly not the case – although the landscape – both real and virtual - is contested the inevitable domination of authoritarian technics is by no means certain. Thus, there must be another alternative – that being the analytical elaboration to include the effects of communicative and medicative technics as well as their instrumental and strategic orientations.
As a virtual reality, it is not worthwhile to consider the entire Internet as one vast Multi-User Domain. Viewed in this manner, the capacity of the network in terms of embodiement and hermeneutic technologies is vastly elaborated. Our capacity to engage in communication and to access information is vastly improved to that of the non-technologically mediated environment. With enhanced communication capacity to contact and communicate with others a sense of sanguinity is generated, with the enhanced ability to access information and criticism of information, the sense of pronia becomes a telic indicator. The capacity of multiple identity formation and of anonymity in the many and varied services of the Internet, strengthens our own sense of identity, the confidence and honesty in it's potrayal and individual richness. As long as the network continues to function, these elaborations and improvements to the lifeworld of individuals and free associations, provides a background of psychological security ane well-being.
The literature reviewed here has no displayed a great deal of consistency in style or content: there seems to be still some confusion over what actually constitutes "virtual reality". At this point, if a Gibson-like cyberspace environment is taken as the benchmark, the technical correlation indicates significant engineering and computational improvements are necessary, although it can be ascertained that such an environment is by no means implausible. Further confusion exists over the social role of the technologies, with notable contradictions between the claimed beneficiary directions and the sites of production. Under the current circumstances, the most significant virtual reality that exists will see is military domination through remote presence, semiautomatic, or even automatic weaponary. Yet virtual realities that are orientated towards communication – of which the Internet is the pivotal example – provide the initial possibility that the neuorses that arise from the unbalanced implementation of instrumental technology can be overcome through the use of communications technology and institutions oriented towards mediation.
Section Bibliography
Aukstakalnis, S. and Blatner, D., Silicon Image: The Art and Science of Virtual Reality, Peachpit, Berkely, 1992. Edited by Stephen N. Roth
Bateson, G., "A Theory of Play and Fantasy" in Steps Tow An Ecology of Mind, Chandler, New York, 1972
Blakenship, L., GURPS Cyberpunk, Steve Jackson Games, 1990
Jackson, S., GURPS Basic Set (3rd Ed), Steve Jackson Games, 1989 [FP 1986]
Huizinga, J., Homo Ludens, Granada, 1970 [FP: EDIT]
Raser, J., Simulation and Society, Allyn and Bacon, Boston, 1969
Slouka, M., War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the High Tech Assault on Reality, Harper Collins, New York, 1995
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