BKVRTRLT.RVW 940106 Simon & Schuster 330 Steelcase Road Markham, Ontario L3R 2M1 or 15 Columbus Circle New York, NY 10023 212-373-8500 or Simon & Schuster Building Rockefeller Center 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 "Virual Reality" Rheingold, 1991, 0-671-77897-8, C$16.75 hlr@well.sf.ca.us In this book you will find out that Howard Rheingold gets asked to give keynote addresses at conferences, that Howard Rheingold collects other writers' descriptions of Jaron Lanier, that Howard Rheingold gets email from famous computer researchers (if that phrase isn't an oxymoron), and that Howard Rheingold's daughter was five years old in 1990. You may even learn something about virtual reality. With written, particularly with printed, communication you are always, in a sense, at the mercy of the author's agenda. You, reading this review, are at my mercy with regard to what I pay attention to in the book and what I ignore. (In a sense it is a virtual reality, isn't it?) There is also room, in written communication, for the author to include personal touches in order to give some feeling for the subject under discussion; to personalize the bald facts of the study. An author should have, though, a sense of responsibility about this. An agenda should be presented attractively, or, at least, convincingly and coherently. Personal asides should be directed at enhancing the communication; at communicating something which straightforward statements can't communicate. Rheingold's writing is characterized by an overwhelming arrogance of position. He makes no concessions to the reader. His agenda is the right one. This is a book with a message, and the message is, "I know lots of neat things and you don't, so shut up and listen." This book is not about virtual reality as much as it is about Howard Rheingold's look at it. Virtual reality is no more a single field of study than artificial intelligence. There is simulation, used in training. There is modelling, the "construction" of something for study and modification before commitment to a final version. There is telepresence, the communication of a remote environment to the user, and teloperating, the manipulation of the remote environment by the user. The book does fall into a kind of topical order--but only as an artifact. Rheingold's real ordering is by visit. This is study by travelogue. In addition, Rheingold insists on robotics, computer gaming, MUD (a multiuser computer version of dungeons and dragons), puppetry, prosthetics, and currency trading as being forms of virtual reality. This is possible, of course, but it tends to reveal virtual reality as merely an extension of other, earlier, simulations. We have always used simulations in teaching, models in building, and communications of one sort of another. Doing it on the computer doesn't add much to the concept. Rheingold belittles the media's interest in virtual sex (which now has it's own term: teledildonics), but only because they see it as sex with a machine. (I don't see why machines wouldn't be good at sex--the parameters are limited, the discriminants are well-defined, and the function is repetitive.) He then rhapsodizes about what he sees as a new form of communications. He even says that we can edit the partner to be whatever we want. What kind of communications is that? The cover blurb promises us an explanation of how virtual reality is going to change society. It doesn't deliver. Rheingold's attitude hovers between the know-it-all cynic and the gee-whiz naif. We are told of some of the possible uses about which other people told him, but there is no attempt at any kind of analysis, let alone prognosis. Some uses of virtual reality undoubtedly have promise, and a few are even useful today. (I understand that the DC-10 simulator is so good that simulation time can actually be logged as command time on the aircraft.) However, we aren't presented with any coherent view of future directions. You will find here lots of demonstration--but few uses. You will find lots of hardware--but nothing of the software necessary to make it work. You will find lots of people (the researchers and developers)--but startlingly little anecdote or personality. Virtual reality, for most people, is to do with image, rather than substance. It may be appropriate that this book is so superficial. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKVRTRLT.RVW ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 DECUS Symposium '94, Vancouver, BC, Mar 1-3, 1994, contact: rulag@decus.ca From: INTNET::EAN%"hlr@well.sf.ca.us" "Howard Rheingold" 12-JAN-1994 18:13:17.87 To: EAN%"ROBERTS@decus.ca" CC: Subj: Your review I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me!