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Dawn of the New Everything

Encounters With Reality and Virtual Reality
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Dec 09, 2017tjdickey rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Enjoy the ride with Jaron here! he is a musician, scientist, technologist, philosopher all wrapped in one, and "Dawn" presents an almost psychedelic journey with him through the early days of virtual reality technology. "Never has a medium been so potent for beauty and so vulnerable to creepiness," writes Lanier; he further sees VR (and "mixed reality," where technology allows us to add virtual aspects to the rest of the world we perceive) as an exciting frontier for basic understanding what it means to be human and to perceive the world. The chapters alternate between narrative memoir of the author's experience founding one of the first Silicon Valley startups dedicated to VR technology, and his musings on the phenomenon. Imagine, he asks us, what it is like to return to the very first memories of childhood, the time when our imagination could conjure anything we wanted, positive and wonderful or harmful. This is just some of the potential of the experience of VR, and we get an insider's thoughts on it - while he is demoing and discussing with Terry Gilliam, the Dalai Lama, Al Gore, Peter Gabriel, and Spinal Tap among others.