ABSTRACT

Virtually every major channel of mass communications in the U.5. has buzzed with the "news" about virtual reality (VR). 1 Whereas early reports in science magazines such as New Scientist and Scientific American explored pragmatic applications of VR, more recent media pieces proclaim that VR holds the key to the technological reinvention of the mundane world of late capitalism. Business Week (Virtual Corporation, 1993) offered a cover story on "The Virtual Corporation" - a new capitalist formation that would be able to reconfigure itself in response to a rapidly changing business environment by using "technology to link people, assets, and ideas in a temporary organization." In its report on the more titillating topic of "virtual sex" and "teledildonics," Playboy used a graphic rendition of a "Virtual Madonna" to suggest another figuration of the term safe sex. Apparently this rush of media attention is not entirely welcomed by the computer scientists and programmers who work on the technoscientific aspects of VR such as computer visualization, three-dimensional sound, and robotic telepresence. "More PR than VR," one scientist grumbled in his posting to the sci-virtual worlds newsgroup in response to early media reviews of the 1992 film, Lawnmower Man. 2 According to the various press

reports, the range of potential applications include everything from medical simulations of virtual surgery to home VR systems to educational theater. The reality of VR is a bit more delimited in that, thus far, fully immersive, interactive VR applications are mostly restricted to expensive "touring" video game installations, a few computer-assisted rendering programs, and flight and tank simulations used by the U.S. government. But reality is really beside the point in discussing the cultural reception of VR; it is exactly because of its "virtuality" that Virtual Reality has animated our collective technological imagination.