Virtual realities and their discontents / edited by Robert Markley.
| Other author | Markley, Robert, 1952- editor, author. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | Baltimore : The Johns Hopkins University Press, [1996] |
| Copyright Date | ©1996 |
| Description | 162 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Supplemental Content | Table of contents |
| Supplemental Content | Contributor biographical information |
| Supplemental Content | Publisher description |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Introduction : history, theory, and virtual reality / Robert Markley -- Boundary disputes : homeostasis, reflexivity, and the foundations of cybernetics / N. Katherine Hayles -- What is an electronic author? Theory and the technological fallacy / Richard Grusin -- Boundaries : mathematics, alienation, and the metaphysics of cyberspace / Robert Markley -- The business of cyberpunk : symbolic economy and ideology in William Gibson / David Brande -- Hacking the brainstem : postmodern metaphysics and Stephenson's "Snow Crash" / David Porush -- Cyberspace and the technological real / Michelle Kendrick. |
| Subject | The recognition that cyberspace is a fiction -- a narrative that creates a coherence it would like to imagine "really" exists -- is crucial to any theoretically sophisticated critique of the limitations of this consensual hallucination and the discontents it imperfectly masks. In this groundbreaking volume Robert Markley and his co-authors set out to discover why "cyberspace provokes often-rapturous rhetoric but resists critical analysis." Taking a variety of approaches, the authors explore the ways in which virtual realities conserve and incorporate rather than overthrow the assumptions and values of a traditional, logocentric humanism: the Platonist division of the world into the physical and metaphysical in which ideal forms are valued over material content. "One of the ironies of our culture's fascination with cyberspace is that our material and psychic investments in Virtual Reality suggest that the death of print culture -- or its disappearance into the matrix -- has been greatly exaggerated. Cyberspace is unthinkable, literally inconceivable, without the print culture it claims to transcend. It is, in part, a by-product of a tradition of metaphysics that, boats against the current, bears us back relentlessly to our past." -- Robert Markley. |
| General note | Revised, expanded version of the fall 1994 issue of the JHUP journal, Configurations. |
| Bibliography note | Includes footnotes with bibliographical references. |
| Other forms | Also issued online. |
| Issued in other form | Online version: Virtual realities and their discontents. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996 |
| Other title | Configurations. |
| LCCN | 95021184 |
| ISBN | 0801852250 (alk. paper) |
| ISBN | 9780801852251 (alk. paper) |
| ISBN | 0801852269 (pbk. ; alk. paper) |
| ISBN | 9780801852268 (pbk. ; alk. paper) |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joyner | General Stacks | QA76.9.H85 V55 1996 | ✔ Available | Place Hold |