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In this BIT, André Nusselder uses the core psychoanalytic notion of fantasy to examine our relationship to computers and digital technology. Lacanian psychoanalysis considers fantasy to be an indispensable “screen” for our interaction with the outside world; Nusselder argues that, at the mental level, computer screens and other human-computer interfaces incorporate this function of fantasy: they mediate the real and the virtual.
Virtual cities are places of often-fractured geographies, impossible physics, outrageous assumptions and almost untamed imaginations given digital structure. This book, the first atlas of its kind, aims to explore, map, study and celebrate them. To imagine what they would be like in reality. To paint a lasting picture of their domes, arches and walls. From metropolitan sci-fi open worlds and medieval fantasy towns to contemporary cities and glimpses of gothic horror, author and urban planner Konstantinos Dimopoulos and visual artist Maria Kallikaki have brought to life over forty game cities. Together, they document the deep and exhilarating history of iconic gaming landscapes through richly illustrated commentary and analysis. Virtual Cities transports us into these imaginary worlds, through cities that span over four decades of digital history across literary and gaming genres. Travel to fantasy cities like World of Warcraft’s Orgrimmar and Grim Fandango’s Rubacava; envision what could be in the familiar cities of Assassin’s Creed’s London and Gabriel Knight’s New Orleans; and steal a glimpse of cities of the future, in Final Fantasy VII’s Midgar and Half-Life 2’s City 17. Within, there are many more worlds to discover – each formed in the deepest corners of the imagination, their immense beauty and complexity astounding for artists, game designers, world builders and, above all, anyone who plays and cares about video games.
Addressing general readers as well as software practitioners, "Software and Mind" discusses the fallacies of the mechanistic ideology and the degradation of minds caused by these fallacies. Mechanism holds that every aspect of the world can be represented as a simple hierarchical structure of entities. But, while useful in fields like mathematics and manufacturing, this idea is generally worthless, because most aspects of the world are too complex to be reduced to simple hierarchical structures. Our software-related affairs, in particular, cannot be represented in this fashion. And yet, all programming theories and development systems, and all software applications, attempt to reduce real-world problems to neat hierarchical structures of data, operations, and features. Using Karl Popper's famous principles of demarcation between science and pseudoscience, the book shows that the mechanistic ideology has turned most of our software-related activities into pseudoscientific pursuits. Using mechanism as warrant, the software elites are promoting invalid, even fraudulent, software notions. They force us to depend on generic, inferior systems, instead of allowing us to develop software skills and to create our own systems. Software mechanism emulates the methods of manufacturing, and thereby restricts us to high levels of abstraction and simple, isolated structures. The benefits of software, however, can be attained only if we start with low-level elements and learn to create complex, interacting structures. Software, the book argues, is a non-mechanistic phenomenon. So it is akin to language, not to physical objects. Like language, it permits us to mirror the world in our minds and to communicate with it. Moreover, we increasingly depend on software in everything we do, in the same way that we depend on language. Thus, being restricted to mechanistic software is like thinking and communicating while being restricted to some ready-made sentences supplied by an elite. Ultimately, by impoverishing software, our elites are achieving what the totalitarian elite described by George Orwell in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" achieves by impoverishing language: they are degrading our minds.
A leading philosopher takes a mind-bending journey through virtual worlds, illuminating the nature of reality and our place within it. Virtual reality is genuine reality; that’s the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of “technophilosophy,” David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already. Along the way, Chalmers conducts a grand tour of big ideas in philosophy and science. He uses virtual reality technology to offer a new perspective on long-established philosophical questions. How do we know that there’s an external world? Is there a god? What is the nature of reality? What’s the relation between mind and body? How can we lead a good life? All of these questions are illuminated or transformed by Chalmers’ mind-bending analysis. Studded with illustrations that bring philosophical issues to life, Reality+ is a major statement that will shape discussion of philosophy, science, and technology for years to come.
The author of Zero and Proofiness explains how to tell truth from fantasy in the digital world, and why it matters Today, the Internet allows us to spread information faster and to more people than ever before—never mind whether it’s true or not. In Virtual Unreality, mathematician, science reporter, and journalist watchdog Charles Seife takes us deep into the information jungle and cuts a path through the trickery, fakery, and cyber skullduggery that the Internet enables. Providing a much-needed toolkit to help separate fact from fiction, Seife, with his trademark wit and skepticism, addresses the problems that face us every time we turn on our computers and Google our most recent medical symptoms, read a politician’s tweet, fact-check something on Wikipedia, or start an online relationship. Let the clicker beware.
In the twenty-first-century digital world, virtual goods are sold for real money. Digital game players happily pay for avatars, power-ups, and other game items. But behind every virtual sale there is a virtual economy, simple or complex. This BIT explains that the objectives of virtual economies—providing content, attracting and retaining users, and earning revenues—are often best pursued in unfree (that is, regulated) rather than free markets.
The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day. Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber’s son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity. For something is systematically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form...
Digital Illusion is the future of entertainment. That future, as seen in this book, is at the intersection of show business and interactivity. It is a future where games, theme-park attractions, and networked virtual worlds are built with seamless, interactive, computer technology, and where exciting new kinds of experience and enjoyment are made possible. It's a future that has already begun! Clark Dodsworth has participated for years in this convergence of the computer and entertainment industries. Here, he gathers prominent contributors from both worlds to describe the design and implementation of computer-based entertainment applications. With striking examples, they show what has been accomplished and preview what is yet to come.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre. The artist John Tenniel provided 42 wood-engraved illustrations for the book.It received positive reviews upon release and is now one of the best-known works of Victorian literature; its narrative, structure, characters and imagery have had a widespread influence on popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre. It is credited as helping end an era of didacticism in children's literature, inaugurating an era in which writing for children aimed to "delight or entertain". The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. The titular character Alice shares her name with Alice Liddell, a girl Carroll knewscholars disagree about the extent to which the character was based upon her.
Digital Delirium is a manifest against the right-wing politics of cyberlibertarianism and for rewiring the question of ethics to digital reality. Bringing together the most creative minds of the digital generation, it explores what is lost and what is gained by being digital.