Review by New York Times Review
JARON LANIER'S book "Dawn of the New Everything" and Jeremy Bailenson's "Experience on Demand" discuss the history and present cutting edge of virtual reality technology, framing it as a potentially useful if not transformative tool for enlarging human empathy, perfecting skills, overcoming trauma and engaging with others. They spend much less time on the possible dangers of V.R. as we move into the future. Bailenson is the director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford, and most of his book reads like a remarkably interesting report on the cool new experiments he's conducting. He's found that virtual reality can help people overcome PTSD, endure painful skin-grafting procedures and practice surgery. An early chapter deals with quarterbacks using the technology to go over what they might have missed during practice. And although his discussion of certain applications of V.R. can sometimes read like an advertisement, he gets what it's really good at, at least for the time being: creating pricey, immersive experiences that are planned in advance, either by capturing something live or by creating it. The N.F.L. knows that the moment a quarterback gets the ball, a million things will happen over the next few seconds that can be caught by expensive cameras, and they made the bet that the cost of capturing those moments to train one person to be better at his job would be worth it. The other objective, committing the time and resources to build something immersive - say, underwater field trip experiences for children who would not otherwise have the chance to swim with sharks - needs more broad application to justify the currently steep price. Bailenson defines V.R. as a scientific and cultural tool. He explores the idea of creating interactive stories - and even has words of advice for their would-be directors - but it's clear that he's first and foremost a scientist, testing hypotheses and proposing new therapies. Lanier's book is, by contrast, intimate and idiosyncratic. He carries us through his quirky and fascinating life story, with periodic nerdy side trips through his early thinking on more technical aspects of virtual reality. If you liked Richard Feynman's autobiographical "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" but thought it was rather self-indulgent, this book will prompt similar reactions. You could almost say that Lanier's vivid and creative imagination is a distinct character in this book, he discusses it so much. Midway through, Feynman himself makes an appearance, and it seems as if we're meeting an old friend. Lanier has been credited with inventing the term "virtual reality," and he founded one of the original companies to produce it, VPL Research. He goes over the technology's history in detail, outlining not only the obstacles to getting consistent hardware but some personalities and interpersonal conflicts that ultimately led to his company's breaking up. He also demonstrates the role personal connections and interactions play in Silicon Valley. This narrative illuminates the overlooked importance of women, referred to by Lanier as G.N.F.s, for Grand Networking Females, in making the connections and taking up the work essential to starting tech companies. For example, at the moment that Lanier was offered start-up funding and needed a corporate lawyer, a G.N.F. introduced him to the right people. Although Lanier goes out of his way to give credit to these women, I'm left with that familiar sinking feeling that, although successful in their own right, they formed the social glue upon which all companies depended but never became as famous as the men they helped. In the late 1980 s, Lanier was a soughtafter speaker in California, an enthusiastic supporter for theoretical, mind-bending experiences that technology would someday offer to audiences of blissed-out hippies. (Lanier discusses lots of drug use in the book but says he doesn't personally partake, "not even marijuana") Two consequences of this early guru persona come out in the book: First, he offers dozens of different definitions of V.R. as a holistic force and cure-all. Second, he comes off as both a technically savvy inventor and a cult leader. As cult leaders go, he seems nice, and certainly preferable to most of the current crop of would-be Silicon Valley cult leaders. His vision is humanistic, and he insists that the most important goal of developing virtual reality is human connection, although he does talk about the fascination of seeing his own hand in V.R. a bit too often to be convincing on that point. He takes on ideology. He dismisses what he describes as the libertarian ideals that have replaced his friends the hippies, and more recently he strongly objects to the new Silicon Valley religion based on the all-powerful possibilities of artificial intelligence. "Every time you believe in ??. you are reducing your belief in human agency and value," he claims, and goes on to define virtual reality as "-A.L," the inverse of A.I., although whether he's referring to technology or ideology he doesn't clarify. Where Bailenson makes virtual reality more approachable and less like magic, as you'd expect from an academic scientist, Lanier plows into philosophy and expands the limits of what V.R. might achieve, blurring definitional lines and sometimes making it all sound truly surreal. In focusing on their authors' own contributions to the development of this tool, these books miss a vital part of the discussion of virtual reality - the world of V.R. once the technology gets really good. They both mention the holodeck on "Star Trek," a realistic and boundless virtual environment requiring no headset and causing no "V.R. sickness," which stood as the background for countless episodes featuring tech failures and ethical dilemmas in subsequent "Star Trek" spinoff series. What "Star Trek" writers got right, and what both authors seem to miss or deliberately avoid, is that virtual reality is just a tool, and can be used for good or evil. Imagine the propaganda that can be developed once people can experience something almost firsthand. Far from being its opposite, V.R. can combine with A.I., creating realistic (and S.T.D. free!) virtual sex. This might be fantastic or terrible, depending on if we think sex with virtual robots is immoral, but imagine what would happen if abusive or pedophiliac makers got their hands on the controls. Instead of PTSD therapy, VR could be used for torture. I'm not trying to be cynical, just realistic: Once video became easy to manufacture, people started contributing widely to YouTtibe. And although I enjoy learning new knitting techniques on that platform, we have recently seen widespread propaganda and depraved cartoons that fool the recommendation algorithms into suggesting them for children. There's no reason to imagine this won't happen on a virtual reality platform when the time comes, which could be soon. Why the blind spot? I think it's because the authors are themselves the current gatekeepers of this exciting technology, and although they plan for it to go mainstream, they desperately want it to be good for society. But Bailenson and Lanier cannot have it both ways: insisting that VR is very realistic, and thus affecting and potentially therapeutic, but also that it will be used only for good. That will happen only if it remains expensive and if the technology stalls. Fat chance. People interested in the current state of virtual reality's applications will enjoy Bailenson, and people interested in the cultural and technological history of VR will likewise enjoy Lanier. As for my concerns about its possible future abuses, we might have to rely on science fiction writers for now. It can help people overcome PTSD, endure painful skin-grafting procedures and practice surgery. CATHY O'NEIL is the author of "Weapons of Math Destruction."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 4, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
Virtual reality gear has come a long way from the primitive flight simulators that helped train pilots as far back as WWII. Now, high-speed computers can project images to a headset-wearing user as fast as 90 frames a second, creating a startlingly vivid sense of presence the feeling of actual, lived experience in another environment. With his Stanford University-based Virtual Human Interactions Lab, Bailenson has spearheaded the adoption of virtual reality (VR) in medicine, business, and, most recently, professional sports. He begins this fascinating study of innovative VR technology with an account of veteran NFL quarterback Carson Palmer's dramatically improved pass-completion ratio via VR training. In addition to peddling VR's obvious potential for the entertainment industry, Bailenson catalogs some other surprising uses: virtual field trips for school children, reducing PTSD by revisiting traumatic experiences, alleviating pain in post-surgery and burn-unit patients. While Bailenson focuses more on laboratory studies than futuristic speculation, everyone with an interest in the digital realm, including technology entrepreneurs and gaming enthusiasts, will find his work thrillingly prophetic.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Virtual Reality (VR) is a psychologically powerful medium that allows people to have any experience at the push of a button. Bailenson (communications, Stanford Univ.), founding director of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, discusses the purposes, uses, and wonders of VR through a first-person perspective citing decades of research. As with any technology, there are negative as well as positive impacts. The negatives of VR include small side effects such as eye strain but also bigger ramifications such as certain behavior modeling. Bailenson also provides thorough explorations of the benefits, including those for sports training and pain management. In fact, the medical uses are extensive; while not yet medically sanctioned, VR can be used as a distraction from dental anxieties or burn treatments. Also, a positive spin on the behavior modeling aspect is that VR can increase empathy by allowing people to walk in another person's shoes. Bailenson has done a considerable amount of VR research himself, but he also quotes researchers such as psychologist Stanley Milgram, journalist Daniel Grossman, and other experts. -VERDICT This firsthand perspective makes for an inviting personal account; readers will enjoy the explanations behind this newly popular technology.-Natalie Browning, -Longwood Univ. Lib., Farmville, VA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An expert on the subject explores virtual reality "as the potent and relatively young technologymigrates from industrial and research laboratories to living rooms across the world."Clunky but still spectacular today, virtual reality is unquestionably the Next Big Thing. Bailenson (Communication/Stanford Univ.; co-author: Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution, 2011, etc.), the founding director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab, delivers a lucid account of how VR works, today's applications (mostly games and education), ongoing research, and its dazzling future. "VR is not some augmentation of a previously existing medium," writes the author, "like adding 3D to movies, or color to television. It's an entirely new medium, with its own unique characteristics and psychological effects, and it will utterly change how we interact with the (real) world around us, and with other people." Wearing a helmet with a screen inside and perhaps other devices such as sensor-equipped gloves, a user enters a seemingly real environment and can interact with it. Since people learn better doing than by watching, VR is already teaching by allowing subjects to walk under oceans and through forests, treating PTSD by re-creating the traumatic event (simply imagining it doesn't work as well), and relieving pain by intense, immersive distraction. Hollywood has taken notice. A working scientist, Bailenson resists the temptation to convert tantalizing laboratory results into revolutionary breakthroughs, and he does not ignore VR's downsides, from simple eyestrain to "simulator sickness" to an ominous blurring between the real and virtual worlds. Producing fake news becomes a snap, and it can teach nasty as well as valuable skills. At least one mass murderer used VR to practice. The "killer app" for VR will be the ability to deal with other people in virtual space. Like miracle cures and a perfect alternate world, it's inevitablebut not yet.A sensible, thoroughly satisfying overview of the next quantum leap in digital technology. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
