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Dawn of the new everything : encounters with reality and virtual reality / Jaron Lanier.

by Lanier, Jaron, author.

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New York : Henry Holt and Company, 2017.

Computer scientists -- United States -- Biography.

Virtual reality -- Philosophy.

Virtual reality -- Social aspects.

9781627794091 (hardcover)

1627794093 (hardcover)

xv, 351 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Preface: Virtual reality's moment -- Introduction -- 1960s: terrors of Eden -- Rescue spacecraft -- Batch process -- Why I love VR (about the basics) -- Bug in the system (about the dark side of VR) -- Road -- Coast -- Valley of unearthly delights -- Alien encounters -- The feeling of immersion -- To don the new everything (about haptics with a little about avatars) -- Nautical dawn -- Six degrees (a little about sensors and VR data) -- Found -- Be your own pyramidion (about visual displays for VR) -- The VPL experience -- Inside-out spheres (a little about VR "video" and sound) -- Scene -- How we settled into a seed for the future -- 1992, out -- Coda: Reality's foil.

"Through a mesmerizing look back over his life in technology, Jaron Lanier, the scientist who is said to have either coined or popularized the term virtual reality, exposes VR's ability to illuminate and amplify our understanding of our species and gives readers a new perspective on how the brain and body connect to the world. An inventive blend of autobiography, science writing, philosophy, and advice, Dawn of the New Everything tells the wild story of Lanier's personal and professional life as a scientist. Raised in the UFO territory of New Mexico, Jaron lived with his father in a geodesic dome they built together in the desert after the sudden death of his mother. Attending college at age fourteen, Lanier was immediately hooked on computers, and from then on his life became entwined with technology. He forged an unconventional career path that eventually led him to the early frontier days of Silicon Valley, where he founded the first VR start-up. An intense and imaginative dreamer, he retained a fierce humanism that continues to guide his innovative work and thought. Understanding virtual reality as being both a scientific and cultural adventure, Lanier demonstrates it to be, in fact, one of the most humanistic settings for technology. In this illuminating book, he cautions against certain computational beliefs such as AI, even as he explains the dazzling possibilities of VR and argues that it can make our lives richer and fuller."--Dust jacket flap.

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