Escapism And Virtual Reality

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Term Paper Title	Escapism And Virtual Reality
# of Words	4619
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	18.48

Escapism and Virtual Reality

Escapism and Virtual Reality

ABSTRACT

The use of computers in society provides obvious benefits and some drawbacks.
`Virtual Reality', a new method of interacting with any computer, is presented
and its advantages and disadvantages are considered. The human aspect of
computing and computers as a form of escapism are developed,  with especial
reference to possible future technological developments.  The consequences of a
weakening of the sense of reality based upon the physical world are also
considered.  Finally, some ways to reduce the unpleasant aspects of this
potential dislocation are examined.  A glossary of computing terms is also
included.

Computers as  Machines

The progression of the machine into all aspects of human life has continued
unabated since the medieval watchmakers of Europe and the Renaissance study of
science that followed  Clocks . Whilst this change has been exceedingly rapid
from a historical perspective, it can nevertheless be divided into distinct
periods, though  rather arbitrarily, by some criteria such as how people
travelled or how information was transferred over long distances. However these
periods are defined, their lengths have  become increasingly shorter, with each
new technological breakthrough now taking less than ten years to become accepted
(recent examples include facsimile machines, video recorders and microwave
ovens).

One of the most recent, and hence most rapidly absorbed periods, has been that
of the computer. The Age of Computing began with Charles Babbage in the late
19th century  Babbage , grew in the calculating machines between the wars
EarlyIBM , continued during the cryptanalysis efforts of World War II
Turing,Bletchley  and finally blossomed in the late 1970's with mass market
applications in the developed countries (e.g.   JapanSord ).  Computers  have
gone through several `generations' of development in the last fifty years and
their rate of change fits neatly to exponential curves  Graphs , suggesting that
the length of each generation will become shorter and shorter,  decreasing until
some unforeseen limit is reached. This pattern agrees with the more general
decrease of length between other technological periods.

The great strength of computers whether viewed as complex machines, or more
abstractly as merely another type of tool, lies in their enormous flexibility.
This flexibility is designed into a computer from the moment of its conception
and accounts for ...

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