Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution

Jim Blascovich, Jeremy Bailenson

Harper Collins, Apr 5, 2011 - Science - 320 pages

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

How achievable are the virtual experiences seen in The Matrix, Tron, and James Cameron’s Avatar? Do our brains know where “reality” ends and “virtual” begins? In Infinite Reality, Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson, two pioneering experts in the field of virtual reality, reveal how the human brain behaves in virtual environments and examine where radical new developments in digital technology will lead us in five, fifty, and five hundred years.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - BakuDreamer - LibraryThing

Like a primer about virtual reality for people who've had their head in a virtual bucket for the last twenty five years. ( But some useful info toward the end )

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - fpagan - LibraryThing

Mostly on the present and foreseeable-future state of virtual-reality technology and psychology. Though they do not project a path to true mind uploading (with consciousness preservation), the authors ...

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• Dream Machines: 9
• A Museum of Virtual Media: 24
• Mirror Mirror on the Wall: 37
• Winning Virtual Friends and Influencing Virtual People: 65
• The Virtual Laboratory: 83
• Who Am I?: 95
• Recreating Yourself: 109
• Street Smarts: 122
• Eternal Life: 138
• Digital Footprints: 154
• The Virtual Jones: 169
• Virtually Useful: 191
• Virtual Yin and Yang: 227
• More Human Than Human: 256
• Notes: 269
• Index: 292

About the author

Jim Blascovich is the director and co-founder of the Research Center for Virtual Environments at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is Distinguished Professor of Psychology. Professor Blascovich has served as the president of international scientific societies, including the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, and he has been invited to lecture on social neuroscience and virtual reality topics worldwide.

Jeremy Bailenson is the founding director of Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab. Professor Bailenson has been featured on Frontline, All Things Considered, and Today, and in Time, Discover, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Science, Health, World, and Style sections of the New York Times, as well as in the New York Times Magazine.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution
• Authors: Jim Blascovich, Jeremy Bailenson
• Publisher: Harper Collins, 2011
• ISBN: 006204169X, 9780062041692
• Length: 320 pages
• Subjects: Science / General