ABSTRACT
This chapter presents bleeding-edge technology and the future of immersive media in 1793—the year when painter Robert Barker and his son Henry first drew crowds to a curious rotunda in Leicester Square in London. The 360-degree panorama painting predated and was eventually superseded by cinema and television. It stands out because, while much of the relatively short history of media beyond oral communication has seen people moving ever further from experiential modes of consumption and toward packaged bits and pieces of reality, its popularity demonstrates that the idea of approximating direct experience has long been a captivating fantasy. Since the late twentieth century, science fiction rooted in real innovation has captured the imagination of generations of people who have gone on to become immersive media’s innovators. In a similar sense, the language of immersive media is fragmented—while some very general rules of thumb have emerged, in speaking with creators people have learned that this field is fantastically broad.
