The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality

As this comprehensive and multidisciplinary book makes clear, virtuality has a pedigree that pre-dates the computer age and modern virtual worlds, a pedigree that can be traced back to classical mythology and beyond. Equally, the concept of virtuality is not the province of one field of study
alone but is the foundation and driving force of many, both theoretical and applied.

Our conceptualizations and applications of virtuality are multiple, as contributors demonstrate across the nine sections of the book that move from philosophy to technologies and applications before returning to philosophy again for a discussion of the utopias and dystopias of virtuality. The almost
50 essays contained within range freely across subjects that include the potential of virtuality, ethics, virtuality and self, presence and immersion, virtual emotions, image, sound and literature, computer games, AI and A-Life, Augmented Reality and Real Virtuality, law and economics, medical and
military applications, religion, and cybersex.

Throughout, contributors discuss differences between virtuality, reality, and actuality, in debates filtered through the lenses of the disciplines represented here, and speculate on future directions. It is not at all clear that there are differences and, if such distinctions are to be found, the
boundaries between virtuality, reality, and actuality continually shift as ideas, modes of organization, and behaviors constantly flow from one to the other regardless of direction. The Handbook presents no unified definition of virtuality to comfort the reader, rather a multiplicity of questions
and approaches underpinned by provocative statements that should further fuel the debates surrounding our notions of virtuality.


Author: Mark Grimshaw
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 09/01/2015
Pages: 792
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 3.22lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.70w x 1.70d
ISBN: 9780190270353

About the Author

Mark Grimshaw is The Obel Professor of Music at Aalborg University, Denmark. He writes extensively on sound in computer games with a particular interest in emotioneering and the use of biofeedback for the real-time synthesis of game sound. He also writes free, open source software for virtual
research environments (WIKINDX) and is investigating the uses of sonification to facilitate creativity in the context of such knowledge tools.

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