Overview
- The first exploration of the human future through virtual worlds
- Experience in-depth nine intense and varied online science fiction games
- Understand the tension between grand human hopes for space exploration and our modest accomplishments
Part of the book series: Springer Series in Immersive Environments (SSIE)
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Table of contents (11 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
The newest communication technologies are profoundly changing the world's politics, economies, and cultures, but the specific implications of online game worlds remain mysterious. The Virtual Future employs theories and methods from social science to explore nine very different virtual futures: The Matrix Online, Tabula Rasa, Anarchy Online, Entropia Universe, Star Trek Online, EVE Online, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade, and The Chronicles of Riddick.Â
Each presents a different picture of how technology and society could evolve in coming centuries, but one theme runs through all of them, the attempt to escape the Earth and seek new destinies among the stars. Four decades after the last trip to the moon, a new conception of spaceflight is emerging. Rather than rockets shooting humans across vast physical distances to sterile rocks that lack the resources to sustain life, perhaps robot space probes and orbiting telescopes will glean information about the universe, that humans can then experience inside computer-generated environments much closer to home.Â
All nine of these fantastically rich multiplayer masterpieces have shown myriads of people that really radical alternatives to contemporary society could exist, and has served as a laboratory for examining the consequences. Each is a prototype of new social forms, a utopian subculture, and a simulation of technologies that have yet to be invented. They draw upon several different traditions of science fiction and academic philosophy, and they were created in several nations. By comparing these nine role-playing fantasies, we can better consider what kind of world we want to inhabit in the real future.
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Virtual Future
Authors: William Sims Bainbridge
Series Title: Springer Series in Immersive Environments
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-904-8
Publisher: Springer London
eBook Packages: Computer Science, Computer Science (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag London Limited 2011
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-85729-903-1Published: 07 September 2011
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-4471-2689-8Published: 27 November 2013
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85729-904-8Published: 06 September 2011
Series ISSN: 2192-631X
Series E-ISSN: 2192-6328
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 202
Topics: Computers and Society, Computer Appl. in Social and Behavioral Sciences, Computer Applications, Media Design, Computers and Education