Infrastructures Of Reality Metaverse Stories Spaces Bodies
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Infrastructures of Reality: Metaverse Stories, Spaces, Bodies
This open access book focuses on two dimensions of the development of the metaverse that are crucial to ‘reality’, namely spatiality and embodiment. Metaversal technologies are thought to fundamentally affect both our spaces and bodies, which are two central aspects of the constitution of social reality. Both spatiality and embodiment are core elements of world-making that are being pulled into the ambit of metaversal projects. On the one hand, metaversal technologies are profoundly spatial in the sense that they render space in virtual form or overlay digital layers onto pre-existing physical spaces. On the other hand, metaversal technologies are directly geared towards the body in that they not only seek to extend or expand our embodied senses and emplace our bodies in virtual spaces, but they also seek to capture their behaviours and actions on a far more granular level. This can create new opportunities in terms of work, social interaction, and leisure, but can also open our bodies up to new, tech-driven interventions and control. Whether in the form of VR or AR, such technologies not only reproduce space but also rely on making spaces more legible and open to automated interventions. Taken together, the ‘metaversification’ of spaces and bodies gives rise to crucial questions about the goals and implications of metaversal developments by large technology companies and about the relationship between the developments of the metaverse and AI systems. Drawing on our combined background and expertise in Science and Technology Studies and the History of Media and Communication, we critically analyse the development of metaversal technologies and platforms by discussing a broad set of developments and examples from a wide range of technology and gaming companies. Written in clear, concise, and accessible language, and combining and applying novel theoretical frameworks and concepts to a currently emergent phenomenon, this book will find a large audience not only within academic and professional circles but also in popular culture.
Reality Media
How augmented reality and virtual reality are taking their places in contemporary media culture alongside film and television. T This book positions augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) firmly in contemporary media culture. The authors view AR and VR not as the latest hyped technologies but as media—the latest in a series of what they term “reality media,” taking their places alongside film and television. Reality media inserts a layer of media between us and our perception of the world; AR and VR do not replace reality but refashion a reality for us. Each reality medium mediates and remediates; each offers a new representation that we implicitly compare to our experience of the world in itself but also through other media. The authors show that as forms of reality media emerge, they not only chart a future path for media culture, but also redefine media past. With AR and VR in mind, then, we can recognize their precursors in eighteenth-century panoramas and the Broadway lights of the 1930s. A digital version of Reality Media, available through the book’s website, invites readers to visit a series of virtual rooms featuring interactivity, 3-D models, videos, images, and texts that explore the themes of the book.
The Metaverse
The Metaverse: A Critical Introduction provides a clear, concise, and well-grounded introduction to the concept of the Metaverse, its history, the technology, the opportunities, the challenges, and how it is having an impact on almost every facet of society. The book serves as a stand-alone introduction to the Metaverse and as an introduction to the range of topics that will be covered by the specialist volumes in The Metaverse Series. Key Features: a concise history of the Metaverse idea and related implementations to date; an examination of what the Metaverse actually is; an introduction to the fundamental technologies used in the Metaverse; an overview of how the different uses and aspects of the Metaverse are having an impact on our lives across multiple disciplines and social contexts; a consideration of the opportunities and challenges of the evolving Metaverse; and a sense of how the Metaverse may mature over the coming decades. This book is a primer and Metaverse reader, drawing on academic research and practical and commercial experiences and taking inspiration from the science fiction origins and treatments of the Metaverse. The book explores the use of the increasing number of virtual worlds and proto-Metaverses which have existed since the late 1990s and includes a critical consideration of recent developments in cryptoworlds and mixed reality. The aim is to provide professional and lay readers, researchers, academics, and students with an indispensable guide to what counts as a metaverse, the opportunities and challenges, and how the future of the coming Metaverse can best be guided.