Customer Reviews

Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution

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This is the kind of book that blows your mind on a regular basis. The studies that Bailenson and Blascovich design and report on are difficult to stop thinking about. These authors look at technology as a way to understand who we are and who we will become, answering key philosophical and psychological questions along the way.

They have described their approach as Transformative Social Interaction, and if anything, this is an understatement. These researchers use the virtual world as a testbed to examine psychological issues in ways that simply were not possible before. And rather than this being reported to you through the lens of a journalist, this comes straight from the pioneers in the field.

And while its easy to imagine this kind of heady stuff being dense and difficult to read, or full of techie jargon, your imagination would be wrong. The book is a delight to read, with humor and insight and intellectual curiosity mixed in equal doses.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the human condition, in how technology is transforming our future, or in reading some of the most cutting-edge, fascinating psychology out there.

Infinite Reality is a fantastic read. Blascovich and Bailenson write about virtual reality, cutting-edge technology, and how we as humans will be affected by both in the upcoming years. If you're an early adopter, you can't afford not to read this book. And, even if you don't consider yourself "tech-y", it's still a super book to pick up. It's a page-turner - I wanted to figure out what was going to happen next, and how all of the various technologies and interventions that are mentioned in the book will affect me in the years to come. IR is an easy read, it's fascinating, and it will certainly be talked about for a while...it offers a glimpse into the future that can't be missed.

Now that the boundaries between virtual and real worlds are fading, it is good moment to review the science behind the new reality that shapes so much of our everyday life. Infinite reality gives a great overview of the science behind the new world in which we are engaging more and more. The authors cover a large number of interesting insights that have been investigated over the last decade. I think this book is not only a must read for futurists and science lovers, but for anyone interested to learn how virtual interactions are influencing our behavior, social relations, health, and well-being.

Why should we care about virtual reality? VR seems like one of those "new tech" ideas that burst on the scene full of hype, are flashily rendered in cult-hit scifi movies, and ultimately fizzle outside the mainstream. Jetson-like visions of artificially intelligent machines and personal jetpacks come to mind.

If, like me or John C. Dvorak, you thought that VR is destined to remain a technological novelty with little part to play in the grand scheme of the human condition, READ THIS BOOK. Written by scientists for a general audience, Infinite Reality is bursting with insight and provocation about how "mediating" technologies throw conventional assumptions of how we see ourselves and others out of the window. Who'd have thought looking at yourself in a virtual mirror could change the way you act in real life? Could the technological capacity for editing yourself and "polishing your avatar" lead to an infinitely regressing arms-race of self-presentation?

If you work in social media, READ THIS BOOK. Here's why - conceptualizing VR in the narrow frame of head-mounted displays and 3-d vision systems obscures the fact that the most scientifically compelling part of this book, the underlying psychological theories, are common to ALL kinds of "technologically transformed" social interactions. If you want to know the latest in how any online social behavior molds our overall life experiences, this is the book for you.

The only ding on this book is that the authors can sometimes come across as VR evangelists (a common problem in books that "present the future"), but I'd rather read a book by people with a real passion for the field, than a dryly objective account of the chances of VR becoming ubiquitous in the near term.

As someone with little time for pleasure reading and habitually turned off by anything resembling "technology" in the title, Infinite Reality by Blascovich and Bailenson was a complete breath of fresh air! An incredibly compelling read, I couldn't believe what a page turner a book about the digital age could be. Each mention of perception theory or a previously executed study was instantly linked to something contemporary readers could appreciate, and every single example was engaging and purposeful.
A favorite chapter was "Virtually Useful." A very common saying when referencing virtual reality, "this is really cool...but what's the point?", is addressed flawlessly with a plethora of insights to possible uses of the newest virtual technology. PETA cites the benefits of a virtual zoo where visitors would experience watching animals in their natural environments rather than the repetitive behavior patterns they exhibit in captivity, while the authors explicate the benefits of a virtual window for those stuck in office cubicles (do a rudimentary form of these not already exist in tropical screensavers?)
Students of psychology or communication will instantly recognize some of the classic studies described, but will be able to appreciate them in whole new way. For instance, the classic "invisible guerilla" study was re-examined, and related to how people with racial bias actually see the world differently, something I hadn't previously considered in the context of this study.
However, one of the most fundamental chapters had to be "A Museum of Virtual Media". While seemingly a history lesson at first glance, this chapter was crucial to understanding the prior impact and forthcoming potential of new technologies on the human condition. Taking readers through milestones in communication technology, each example illustrated the tools humankind have created to facilitate virtual travel from the distant past to the present day. Way before digital technologies were invented; we have used storytelling, art, theater, movies, etc. to create worlds that are not "grounded reality" but forms of virtual reality. It was staggering to think that we've been doing this since ancient times, and "virtual reality" is simply a new label for a perpetual human behavior.
A truly wonderful manuscript full of exciting new technologies, insights to our future, and reminders of the significance and implications of our past, Infinite Reality is not just a great read, but an experience not to be missed.

The authors do a great job of synthesizing over a decade of fascinating experimental findings in virtual reality (VR). VR isn't just a lab artifact anymore. Millions of people interact via avatars in online games every day. In this book, the authors describe the outcomes of subtle and provocative manipulations in lab experiments:

- What happens when you put someone in a taller avatar? Do they become more confident?
- When you put someone in their own aged avatar, how does it change the way they think about their future?
- What happens when you create a doppleganger avatar of someone, and then show them the doppleganger doing something they have never done?

The book illustrates how virtual reality isn't simply a replica of physical reality. VR allows us to break the rules of physical reality in productive and transformative ways. These studies provide insight into how we should think about identity and personality.

The ideas presented in the book also have broad application. This isn't just about theories in psychology. The empirical findings can be applied to many domains, such as marketing, health games, political campaigning, and social networking sites.

If you want a thought-provoking book on what it means to have a digital identity, this is the book for you.

Academic research and virtual worlds can both be pretty pointless. Academic research ON virtual worlds - even more useless, right? WRONG. This book describes a series of virtual world examples that are extremely relevant to our lives. True, many of the examples come out of academic research, but the book certainly doesn't read like it. In other words, it's not boring! Actually, it's a fascinating page-turner and conversation starter, kinda like Freakanomics, Blink, Tipping Point, etc. I'm planning to give it as a gift to my "thinker" type friends. You should too!

As an academic, I read a lot of relatively simple ideas that masquerade in jargon and inefficient writing to the point where I can barely understand them. Bailenson and Blascovich have done the opposite. They address profound questions about our capacity to perceive "reality" through completely accessible, lucid, entertaining prose. I'm almost ready to recommend this book to my dear mother... (as soon as she can figure out how to open her email account unassisted!)

Though there are multiple take-home messages from this book, I found myself most challenged by their implication that reality deserves to be thought of as a continuum. So many of the world's problems emanate from divergent perceptions and experiences of "reality" -- e.g., I think I see the world as it really is, so if your opinion differs from mine, you must be wrong. As we increasingly engage in the various virtual realities described in the book, maybe the futuristic platforms of social interaction can actually begin helping people be more understanding of those who perceive different realities?

Read this book for fundamental insights into human nature from two premier social scientists; reread it for a (virtual?) tour of the coolest technology around!

This was a fascinating and fun read for me.

From the onset, I was surprised by the notion that a consideration for what is "real" could include many more dimensions or layers than I had previously considered, and that the real-virtual distinction inherent in the phrase "virtual reality" is perhaps unnecessary, even limiting the way we (who do work/research in this area) think about evoking experiences in VR. In retrospect perhaps it should not be so surprising, but I work in the field and had not so directly considered virtual experiences in that way.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the fascinating and very accessible look at a wide range of research, presented via engaging stories, about how we perceive real and virtual humans. Among other things, the stories illuminate how seemingly very subtle variations of appearance or behavior can substantially influence the perceptions and behavior of real humans. This in itself is perhaps not so surprising, considering that throughout our lives (from children to adults) we learn how to manipulate others through our appearance, mannerisms, choice words, and style of interaction. What is surprising to me is at the virtual humans can do this too, even though the hardware-software systems used for the experiences are not so subtle--they are relatively "klunky" compared to real humans. Given that we surely "know" (at some level) that such virtual humans are not flesh and blood, the fact that they can influence us is fascinating to me. It seems that there are some very powerful learned cues or triggers coming into play, and it's intriguing to think about how those cues/triggers can be leveraged for good.

Jeremy and Blaskovitch have created an engaging book that is a must read for anyone living in our current technology-driven society. Whether we like it or not the world around us is becoming more and more digital and this opens up the doors for all sorts of new social phenomenon. Whether we are aware of it or not these phenomenon impact our lives on a daily basis, and their effects will only increase. Hence, as citizens it is not only to our advantage, but also our responsibility to become aware of the effects of digital immersion.

The studies presented in this work are fascinating and supported by years of rigorous research done at Stanford University and other cutting edge labs and are presented in such a way as to be accessible to anyone, regardless of background.

I highly recommend this book.