Human-Computer Interaction Books

I wish I had this book 2 years earlier while I was writing my Master's Dissertation; It gives not only the theory of the techniques behind data mining, word analysis/ search,tag clouds,clustering and recommendation engines, but gives good examples based on the best open source frameworks.

The author also added sections on JBoss Rules / Drools CEP (Complex Event Processing) in repsonse to reviewer feedback.

Disclaimer: I was given a review copy by the publisher, but without any preconditions (i.e. I am free to criticise)

I was recently asked by the publisher to review Collective Intelligence in Action. The author is Satnam Alag, a Bay area engineer with a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Alag is VP of NextBio, a specialized search engine.

The first chapter is free and so is the source code used in the book.

The book is for Java developers who want to implement "Collective Intelligence" applications in Java. It tells us about extracting and applying data from blogs, wikis and social network applications. I am not one to praise, but this book succeeds brilliantly. If you are a Java engineer and work with Web technologies, you must get this book. It covers topics such as computing similarity measures using vector models, Naive Bayes Classifiers, inverse document frequency (idf), Machine Learning (using the Weka API), building a crawler with regular expressions, collaborative filtering (with links to open source tools), and so on.

Even if you do not work with Java, if you care for high-end Web applications, this book is for you. It reminds me of Lyon's Java¿ Digital Signal Processing book. It offers the gist of what academia knows, but focuses on what people (engineers and researchers) do in practise.

The book is not meant for academia however. There are references, but no theorem.

Disclaimer. I did not get paid to review this book, and I do not stand to gain anything if you buy the book. I have no relationship with the publisher or the author.

Further reading. A competing book is Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications by Toby Segaran. It uses Python instead of Java.

I was not surprised to see "Hello, Sopan. We have recommendations for you" line at the top
when I logged into the Amazon.com site. Yes, this kind of functionality is very easy to
implement into your application after reading Satnam's Collective Intelligence in Action

Have you ever wonder how Netflix is able to recommend movies, what are the latest trends
in the making search more intelligent or how you can intelligently gather new content and
present it to your application?

In this book, Santnam does an excellent job providing the answers to all these questions
The book covers the wide breadth of the topics with amazing focus and detail-architecture
for adding intelligence, tagging and tag clouds, content aggregation through focused web
crawling and from the blogospare, leveraging machine learning techniques such as clustering
and predictive modeling, intelligent search and building recommendation engine.

I particularly liked the approach to explain the mathematical concepts with simple examples,
followed by implementing it in simple Java and then leveraging open-source software.

This book can be very useful if you are interested in integrating different Open Source Softwares
to deliver Enterprise Class Application.

I also liked the authors style of providing summary at the end of each chapter.
He also provides huge set of very useful resources for reading further on the topics
covered into the chapters.



You must pickup this book if you are

[1]. serious (developer/manager/architect type of Eng) on adding search or
intelligent/smartness into your Application
[2]. person involved in developing (programmer, tester, manager) Social
Networking Application.
[3]. involved in managing "Knowledge Management Infrastructure" of any size organization

This Book will provide you a great foundation for developing Enterprise Class
Features.


I highly recommend it.

This is a great book! It is a hands-on guidebook for implementing collective intelligence concepts. It is the first Java-based book to emphasize the underlying algorithms and technical implementation of scalable data mining techniques, such as, trend analyzing, relationship discovering, and predictive modeling. It provides a pragmatic approach to personalization by combining content-based analysis with collaborative approaches.

The concepts and code examples in the book have been practically used in a life science search engine named NextBio, which proves to be a great success. I strongly recommend this book.

Though a book of the 90's I have just used this book as a text in my course on virtual architecture in our computer graphics program. It worked superbly. The text stimulated long fruitful discussions (some for three unbroken hours) and put students in the state of mind to produce 3D based sites of significant meaning. Students took to heart Anders cautionary assessments on designing cyberspace and produced work that leapt well ahead of the work they were producing prior to the discussions. Anders chooses all of the best sources for his analysis of the similarities and contrasts between actual space and cyberspace, especially his use of Jean Piaget's interactional psychology as a base.

This is an extremely thorough introduction to cyberspaces and has many beautiful illustrations. This is an intellectually sophisticated book for non-computer scientists. It begins with a rigorous intellectual picture and then continues to survey existing cyberspaces with many insights along the way, that will please even techno-nerds.

The book fills in many details in the history of building cyberspaces.

Next year in cyberspace!

The accelerating growth of personal computing over the past two decades and the unprecedented rise of the Internet in the 1990s has led to a countless number of books. Many deal with particular aspects of this revolution - linear historical accounts, analysis of emergent psycho-social phenomena, how-to manuals on the latest program or technology, etc.. Very few however, manage to capture a broad overview and comprehensive analysis of this explosion. Fewer still have documented the wide array of less common technologies and research efforts that have accompanied and in many cases, presaged, the more familiar aspects of today's cyberspace.

It's not surprising then, that a uniquely comprehensive view should come from a member of the original generalist profession - architecture. In "ENVISIONING CYBERSPACE: Designing 3D Electronic Spaces," architect and media theorist, Peter Anders has succeeded in delivering one of the best and rarest overviews of the beginnings of the Information Age.

Integrity demands that I disclose that some of my own work is featured in this book, but what I discovered to my great surprise and delight, is that it's also filled with many incredible technologies and ideas that I was unaware of. Such is the difficulty in being aware of everything that's going on in our rapidly evolving era.

Anyone interested or involved in the design and development of information technologies would do well to read this book. The future is not limited to just a simple extrapolation of what's most commonly known today. The real Information Age is a vast, barely explored region of possibility around us and ahead. We're lucky to have Peter Anders serving as both Lewis and Clark.

Something that makes Peter Anders' _Envisioning Cyberspace_ especially interesting is that it's the work of an architect and designer, for whom the issues of designing workable, user-centered cyberenvironments are comprehensible. He's gathered and comments upon a wide-ranging collection of work that he finds interesting, efforts that approach and address the big issues if not always fully realizing them. It often reminds me of the 1991 anthology _Cyberspace: First Steps_ edited by Michael Benedikt (another architect), or some of the hot early-'90s books on Virtual Reality, in that it's full of enthusiasm and enjoyment at the elegance of possible solutions. In this hard-nosed commercially-driven era that's a breath of fresh air; the real kind, not the virtual.

This book is interesting, well-written, provocative . . . and ultimately, disturbing. Its immediate relevance is to managers in businesses relying on information technology, but the trickle down effect will affect many.

What a great book. This is fun book that also makes your think. Mr. Moore has an easy, conversational style that is both engaging yet provocative. I will never think about time, truth, trust and privacy in the same way again....I learned a lot

Mr. Moore provides a superb framework for understanding how to create competitive advantage in a time of unrelenting pressure on our time. As an E-commerce manager, I found myself challenging my current priorities against "the verities of time, truth, trust, and privacy." This book is incredibly thought provoking.

This is a delightful book: it is smart but easy to read. The author burns images and analogies into your mind that are unforgetable. In particular, I cannot forget his treatment of time and privacy. These are the best descriptions of the problems of privacy in the internet and in the compression of time that I have ever read. Overall, this book makes you think but flows easily and conversationally. He is dealing with big issues in an accessible way.

We at Fragland.com usually don't advertise for books or anything but we've received the book Monster Gaming which is written by Ben Sawyer and published by Paraglyph press and to be honest: it's great!

Everything that's got anything to do with gaming, from regular gaming over competitive gaming to even modding and real development, is covered here along with useful links and addresses for people who want to know even more.

So if you're going on holiday or want a book about gaming to read I suggest this book It's +300 pages will keep you occupied in the gaming atmosphere.

You won't regret it !

I've been looking all over the place for a gaming guide like this. Most of the books out are very basic or they just cover tips for using certain games. This book really captures what I want to know about gaming. The author seems to really know his stuff.

I was drawn to the book because it had a chapter on modding and enhancing game hardware (which turned out to be really good). But the more I read in the book, the more I liked. I didn't realize that there were so many interesting resources for gamers such as places to get old vintage games.

This is the sort of book that every gamer should get a copy of and read cover to cover. It's quite funny in places and just a blast to read in general. The author even included a chapter at the end of the book about what it is like to be a game developer, which was a treat for me because I'd like to develop games some day.

At first, you might imagine that the title refers to the computer opponents in various twitch games like Doom or Quake. But no. Sawyer means the fanatic gamers, to whom he addresses the book. He being one himself.

Chapters span all the important topics of computer gaming. From personalising your hardware through overclocking the CPU to tips on searching eBay for items. Plus, of course, on the latter, you can sell various gaming memorabilia.

He also provides ancillary data on books and movies spawned from games. Though he thinks most of the movies are purely dross. There is a fascinating table of the books in Chapter 7. You may be surprised by how extensive it is, with several books being written by well known authors like Mercedes Lackey and Alan Dean Foster. (The money is good for such purely work-for-hire, I guess.)

Most importantly to some of you, he tells how to hook up to the competitive gaming scene, with lists of various regional conventions for the hard core. Interested?

We at Fragland.net usually don't advertise for books or anything but we've received the book Monster Gaming which is written by Ben Sawyer and published by Paraglyph press and to be honest: it's great!

Everything that's got anything to do with gaming, from regular gaming over competitive gaming to even modding and real development, is covered here along with useful links and addresses for people who want to know even more.

So if you're going on holiday or want a book about gaming to read I suggest this book It's +300 pages will keep you occupied in the gaming atmosphere.

You won't regret it !

Stephen @ Fragland.net

Charge coupled device (CCD) count the number of electrons within each pixel. Each number is stored, so the whole image can be represented by a series of numbers. Computers can see my means of this device and attempt functional replication of the eye. In a color image the numbers represent both the hue and intensity of the pixel.

One of the earliest vision problems to be subject to machine recognition was hand-writing technology. Character segmentation is important because printed characters can be of different size and can be separated by neighbor characters by different distances. The PDA made handwriting recognition an important field of research. The recognition system possess information about how the characters were written, writing direction and the writing order of the strokes and match with the shape of stored characters. In 1960, Israel Gelfand, at the USSR Academy of Science developed a successful natural handwriting technology. Stefan Pachikov founded paragraph International which SGI later buys. NHR technology underlying idea is that fact that cursive handwriting is a series of movements made by a writing instrument. Each movement can be represented by one more more of eight elements that are sufficient to describe all the trajectories of the pend found in the cursive letter of the Roman alphabet. The analytical word recognizer is based on a database of symbol prototypes and neural network generalized pattern recognition schemes and training.

Human Face recognition differentiates unique physical attributes about a person face, the different heights, depths, and weights. Computer vision systems can pick peoples face out of a crowd almost instantaneously and measure various features of that face and compare the measurements with those faces stored in the database. Everyones face has distinguishable features for example peaks and troughs. There are about 80 of these features on the human face, including distance between the eyes, the width of the nose and the depth of the eye sockets. The computer after measuring the face creates a numerical number representing the face. Usually 14 to 22 of the 80 features in a face print is enough to complete the recognition process. Video surveillance system search for face in Low resolution image of the scene and switches to a high resolution search when a head-like has been spotted. Once a face is detected, the system determines then determines the position, size and pose of the head. The image of the head is then scaled up or down in size and rotated in the same size and pose employed for faces in the system's database. The most successful recognition system can match faceprints at 60 million per minute.

MobileEye acts as a silent driver assisting with Forward looking, side mirror, and in cabin recognition. MobileEye can detect cars moving into the passing lane, distance ranges, and switch attention by changing colors indicating possible collision objects, pedestrians moving into the travel lane, and off-road path finding. The recognition software can watch passenger position and make decision for airbag deployment. Cameras on the side mirror can watch blind spots and warn for sudden merges into the passing lane by other cars. Side mirror recognition differentiates between cars not within collision and those who are. Forward looking recognition system can recognize markings on the road. "The system fits a three-parameter road model that accounts for lateral position, slope and curvature. The curvature parameter is used for increasing the warning reliability under curved roads and for estimating time to lane crossing."

The ears of a computer are microphones, devices that contain some sort of diaphragm that vibrates in concert with audible sound. The vibrations are converted to electrical signals, which can be displayed as a waveform on a screen or measured electronically. Speech recognition is recognizing waveforms. Different people can say the same word with different pitches, speeds, and intensities; all these variation change how the word is said. Dynamic time warping has the affect of stretching or compressing segments of the speech sound in a word, in order to make the waveform easier to match with a store waveform. A technique called Hidden Markov Models HMMs are used to recognize phoneme strings and calculate summed values for all possible combinations of the sounds. The highest probabilities phoneme string is selected. Visual recognition systems are being used to watch lip movement and use context feedback to improve speech recognition.

It's been about 50 years since the word Artificial Intelligence was coined. Since then there have been a number of television shows and movies about AI, but in real life AI has yet to produce a young boy to life an even quasi-normal life.

Behind the scenes however, research has been going on to develop the sub-systems needed as a foundation of AI. In this book the author describes what's going on in computers about such critical areas as vision, speech, taste, smell and so on.

The big problem, and what's covered in most of the book are what you might call the thinking components. How do computers think? How do they play games such as chess? Or one of the hot new items, play soccer. Then there are real problems like getting the computer to write fiction? Can a computer be programmed to transpose bits and bytes into thought, or love?

There have been a number of books lately on robotic activities you can do at home. This one is a description of the state of the art in the research labs around the world.

Robots Unlimited: Life In A Virtual Age by David Levy (leader of the winning team of the Loebner Prize Competition in 1997) is a highly researched and historically impressive documentation devoted to the past fifty years of research and development in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. As an informative and superbly written study, Robots Unlimited offers readers an outstanding historical survey and a seminal reference to the many intricacies of an ever-escalating modern science in these specialized fields, as well as knowledgeable and intuitive predictions of what the future may bring for robotic and artificial intelligence breakthroughs. Very strongly recommended to all students of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and relevant technological advancements, Robots Unlimited gives its readers a complete and expert analysis and collection of such a popular and innovative science.

Throughout the last five decades, fed by both curiosity and military requirements, the design and construction of robots has occupied the time of many researchers, and involved the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars. In this book the author presents an overview of robotics for a semi-popular audience, beginning with a fairly detailed summary of the early history of artificial intelligence. It should be remembered that robotics is but one subfield of artificial intelligence, and that the latter field encompasses much more than the building of humanoid-looking machines. And interestingly, when one compares the research forty or even fifty years ago with what is going on at the present time, it is readily apparent that the differences are more of quality rather than quantity.

But intelligent machines do not have to take the form of humanoid robots. Hollywood and science fiction novels are partly responsible for this attitude, as are the philosophers, who insist upon the Turing test as being a genuine test for machine intelligence. It is evident when reading the book, especially the last part, that the author will not be convinced of the existence of intelligent machines until they do most, if not all, of the things that humans do. This includes the ability to make love, the ability to reproduce, the possession of legal rights, the possession of consciousness, and the ability to feel emotion and fall in love. A machine taking the form of a humanoid robot that was able to do all of things would certainly qualify as being intelligent. But there are many other types of machines, some of which exists today and are working in the field, that qualify as being intelligent, even though it is a different type of intelligence than what most humans are used to (or would acknowledge as such).

This observation raises another issue that is noticeably lacking in this book, as well as in the history of artificial intelligence in general. This issue involves the adoption of a quantitative definition of machine intelligence that will allow its measurement. If one is to judge the progress in artificial intelligence, it is necessary to define criteria, possibly informal, for assessing to what degree one machine is more intelligent or of higher quality than another. The criteria must also be able to distinguish an intelligent from a non-intelligent machine. The Turing test is not entirely suitable as a criterion, since it emphasizes, somewhat myopically and exclusively, human intelligence as being the most objective measure.

After careful study of the history of artificial intelligence, in this book and many others, as well as research papers, and through the development and practical use of `algorithms' that are deemed to be intelligent in some way, this reviewer arrived at an informal classification scheme for intelligent machines. Sometimes this scheme allows the quantitative measurement of machine intelligence, a `machine IQ' if you will, but usually it classifies machines according to what they can do, and to the degree that the machines require assistance from another machine (human or not).

For example, one could label a machine `Type-1' if it is an ordinary calculating machine, unable to learn or check its answers, or unaware of its environment. Type-1 machines are uninteresting from the standpoint of artificial intelligence research. A `Type-2' machine can find answers to domain-specific problems and check these answers according to standards given to it from another machine. Type-2 machines essentially need `tutors' or some kind of assistance to evaluate or continue learning. The chess playing machines described in this book, such as Deep Blue and Deep Thought, could be classified as Type-2 machines. The Pinkerton music-creating machine is also Type-2 as are the rule-based music-creating machines discussed in the book.

`Type-3' machines are able to check their answers to domain-specific problems and make judgments as to the quality of these answers, and do independently of any external standards. The Samuel checkers playing machine and the NeuroGammon and TD-Gammon backgammon playing machines described in this book could be classified as Type-3 machines, as would the `metagame' machines that can learn how to play a game given only the rules. Also Type-3 is the bridge-playing COBRA machine, and the Poki poker-playing machine, the Thaler Creativity Machine, the BRUTUS storytelling machine, all of which are discussed in the book.

A `Type-4' machine is one that is able to judge the quality of its answers to domain-specific problems and then propose theories or explanations that subsume these problems. Type-4 machines are thus machines that one could use to conduct scientific research for example. The EMI music-making machine discussed in the book is a Type-4 machine, due to its ability to analyze the structure of the music presented to it, and then extract the composer's style from it. Type-4 machines have been used in automated drug discovery, although this use is not discussed in this book.

Next are the `Type-5' machines, which are able to solve problems in more than one domain, but with their interest in solving these problems is instigated by an external inquirer, i.e. they do not possess any innate curiosity. The `commonsense reasoning' machines of Cycorp, Inc, which are discussed in the book, are examples of Type-5 machines. It is their ability to solve problems in more than one domain that makes Type-5 machines of great interest to many in the artificial intelligence community. Many in fact do not believe a machine is truly intelligent unless it can think in more than one domain.

A `Type-6' machine can express curiosity and creativity, can solve problems without any external instigation, and can develop theories or explanations around these problems. The author discusses several types of machines in the book that could be classified as Type-6, if one omitted the ability to find solutions without being instigated by an external machine or human.

Lastly, there are `Type-7' machines, which can self-manage and self-replicate, and are also Type-6. Self-replication is discussed in the book, but there are no machines to date that are Type-7.

The one quality that makes this book a clear winner is the quality of the content and clarity of author Rebecca Riordan's writing. She uses a friendly, humorous, often bitingly sarcastic voice that eases the normal tension accompanying such a complex topic as UI design for Windows applications with .NET technologies. You'll appreciate this tone as Riordan takes you through some very challenging scenarios in developing winning desktop apps.

The main focus is on presentation tier technologies and techniques used to create great programs that customers will really enjoy using. The book starts out with five phenomenally-written chapters on GDI+, typography, color, and image programming that every developer working with .NET should read, whether they're examining UI design for desktop applications, or otherwise. It also includes a helpful glossary of development terms mentioned throughout the text that you'll enjoy and refer to often.

Riordan also attempts to demystify the many complexities of .NET databinding within Windows Forms. as do most Addison-Wesley texts, the book's physical properties are to be appreciated, using sturdy binding and thick paper, making the book close and sit easily after a session open on your lap (and who hasn't wrecked at least book doing so?).

The only downside to this book (and a minor one at that) is the exclusive presentation of code in Visual Basic .NET, which would make the book largely one-dimensional to programmers working with that language (or liberal minded C# readers). But programming language semantics aside, this is a real gem, and one you'll want to pickup for your WinForms team projects.

A formidably detailed and comprehensive attack on the problem of user interfaces and data visualisation. Riordan tackles this in the context of Microsoft's .NET platform. Notice the two topics. There are books on pure UI design, for various operating systems. Nothing wrong with that. But they tend to concentrate on the strict visuals and how the user interacts with various widgets. Usually, any data to be displayed or modified is general and lacks much structure.

There are certainly elements of this approach here. Like where Riordan discusses the various properties of fonts and faces, or colours or different image types.

But she goes further. She shows how to make UIs customised for SQL data. To make your SQL Server easily accessible. A full workout. From using the widget families that come with .NET and hooking these all the way back to a SQL Server. In, for example, a four tier architecture. Unusual to see all this in one book. PLus, she makes VB seem very easy to design and program in.

I was initially surprised by the structure of this book. It starts with an introduction on user interface principles, then in goes into the mechanics of user interface implementation in .NET, then it veers into databases. This is where I thought I was lost, but actually it turns out that it's the anchor for the sections that follow, which show how how databases are linked to the UI and how that is done effectively. In this way I think the book is different than any other technology centric book on .NET user interfaces, which only cover the API portion of the problem.

On the whole I am impressed by this book. I think it takes a fresh look at the entire topic. In addition it's well written and not overly illustrated. It's a unique book, so I recommend a look before you buy, but I certainly recommend the look.

Seeing Data: Designing User Interfaces for Database Systems Using .NET is an amazing book for anyone designing a user interface (UI) to allow users to display and edit data. It is very specifically focused on .NET WinForms development, however much of the information is useful for all developers.

Starting with coverage of the basics, like fonts, colors, etc., the book moves on to how to display and allow proper editing of various data types. This is very much a needed book, since the Microsoft User Interface standards book has not been updated since 1999. A lot has happened since 1999 in the Microsoft world, and the advice Rebecca offers comes from a lot of hard-won experience.

I do not do a great deal of Windows Forms development, but when I do, I will keep this book nearby.

I picked this text for my virtual reality course here at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory and found it to be an excellent, well written, comprehensive introduction to the field.

It is interesting this book, since gives a complete visualization of the current virtual reality. In form didactics it travels all the fields of the VR, not serving alone for a neophyte, also for somebody that the VR knows. Very good book
Hugo Neira S

I received this book shortly after it was published. Since then it has served well as a reference for my students working in my VR research group, as well as being very enlightening for me as well.
I will be teaching a course on VR the next two spring semesters at Valparaiso University, and will be using this text.
The book does a great job of spanning the current VR technology out there, as well as addressing issues for development. I'd recommend it for VR researchers, as well as those teaching VR at the undergrad or grad level.

Understanding Virtual Reality" is the definitive, authoritative, and exhausive exploration of the field by two insiders and practioners, Sherman and Craig. Virtual reality, a uniquely viewer-centric, large field-of-view, dynamic display technology has evolved over the past decade in many physical formats, driven by many software applications using a variety of operating systems, computers, and specialized libraries. Sherman and Craig capture them all in this substantial volume.

Most writing about virtual reality involves summarizing and interpreting interviews and demos, with massive doses of the speculative and the spectacular, and lots of historical fuzziness. Sherman and Craig, however, lived in the world of actual VR production at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where corporate researchers, educators, scientists, and artists make use of this technology in their daily work. They have personally suffered with VR tech and benefited greatly from access to it as well as to amazing amounts of computing, engineering, and scientific talent. They were held to real deadlines of corporate contracts, scientific conference demonstrations, and the design of IMAX productions. While they were doing all this, they were also writing this book. As a result, "Understanding Virtual Reality" has the integrity and feel of a long-term, eyewitness account and a personal journal, because these production-oriented researchers were documenting the times contemporaneously, rather than trying to reconstruct the details years later.

I know all this because I was their group leader for a couple of years in the mid-90's at NCSA, and their colleague in VR the years before and after. I co-invented the CAVE hardware, among other things, with Dan Sandin at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in 1991.

The unique approach to handing the history of `virtual art' is scholarly and innovative, undermining popular conceptions of the notion of `virtuality'. I would have appreciated colour plates, since the subject matter often pertains to the study of many forms of visual art. A glossary of terms also would have been helpful. The addition of these to elements would make the book much more accessible to readers who are introducing themselves to these concepts and artworks.

Broad in breadth and depth, Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion traces the history of virtual art through studying the history of `immersion' and `illusion' in the arts, and relates these ideas to the current developments in `virtual reality'. It is unlikely that the general public, or even most arts professionals, would consider the panoramic frescoes of ancient Pompeii a precursor to the 1980's notion of goggled cybernetic digitalia, nor the recent developments in transgenic art, yet this book includes very convincing arguments that link these ideas to the development of today's virtual art. Self-proclaimed as the `first' to link art history and immersive visual culture to the field of contemporary digital environment-based art experiences, this innovative and convincing research is laid out before the reader in an intellectual, yet accessible fashion, complete with diagrams and illustrations to illuminate key ideas. Many interesting works of art are chronicled here, placed within a contextual framework that demonstrates the significance of the ideas and technology supporting the works. Gathering this information in a print format also allows these works to live on and influence other thinkers outside of directly experiencing the works, which is often not technically possible, given the temporal nature of many immersion-based artworks. Ideas do not develop in a vacuum, but through the dialogues of overlapping discourses, combined with critical thought. Grau demonstrates that virtual art is not exactly new, and it satisfies a basic human desire for experiencing the `other', whether through looking at panoramic paintings of mythology or faraway lands, or designing a prototype Holodeck (Star Trek). Unexpected parallels abound, making this a very informative read that may forever change the reader's interpretations of classical art history as well as of virtual reality.

It is likely that Grau reaches the academic arts audience he sets out to reach with this book, as is demonstrated by the numerous references to this book online, in various journals, blogs, and academic websites. This focus on art history as media history would be thoroughly appreciated by Marshall McLuhan fans, as well as art historians who specialize in media studies. Artists and historians interested in 3-D modeling, avatar development, online immersive environments, transgenic art, and historical instances of illusion in the arts will also find this book a valuable and up-to-date resource. This book would make a welcome addition to a University library, a gallery or artist-run centre's library, or the personal collection of savvy technophiles.

WIRED spoke about a "great read" and Lev Manovich decribed Grau's book as a "must-read for anyone interested in new media, art history, and any field using virtual images." - Grau lives up to expectations !  He analyzes what is new in media art by balancing recent works and historic media development, and so retells art history as media history. An interdisciplinary study in art history, media history, and new media art, the cross fertilization enriches his analysis and helps clarify the essence of immersion and Virtual Reality.  Beyond Grau's analysis, I was thankful to see so many artists involved - many hot names. This book will be valuable for both practitioners and theoreticians. Hopefully there will be a paperback soon for students.

This book is an excellent rendition for electro-visual labs.
The work is perfect if you are looking for new ideas on interior
decorating for the home. There are many exotic art forms
depicted in this work.

Virtual reality is integrated into art immersion. The work
provides a panoramic view of the Battle of Sedan. There are
pictures of the Futurama in the 1939 World Fair. In addition,
a screenshot portrays the Home of the Brain. The work is
excellent for anticipated student school projects.
This work is perfect for art enthusiasts, historians,
interior decorators, architects , photographers and a whole
host of professionals in varied fields.

This book is a outstanding contribution to the upcoming new field image science.

Michael Heim has written a very balanced look at Virtual Reality. In fact, he has even coined a term for it; Virtual Realism, to contrast with the over hyped ramblings of the "network idealists". I found myself taking time to savor this book. It is not a page turner in the proverbial sense. Rather the book causes one to calmly meditate on the current "Art of Virtual Reality". It also introduces novel (to me anyway) concepts such as two models of virtual world building: the tunnel and the spiral. One of the final chapters goes in depth about Nature and Cyberspace, something that I had never considered in the same thought. Despite being about a subject that is somewhat "out there" this book was very approachable. If you are at all remotely interested in man and computers, networks, the nature of reality or other philosophical topics central to the new millenium then buy this book. Read it carefully. Enjoy.

Michael Heim's "Virtual Realism" is a critical yet pragmatic exploration of the present state and future evolution of virtual reality (VR) technology. Unlike much of the predominate rhetoric of VR theory, Heim's does not situate himself as either a VR idealist or alarmist, but instead offers a strategy for reconciling these polar positions by way of a critical, yet pragmatic analysis called "virtual realism". What is most is interesting about this book is the eclectic array of examples Heim's uses to support and illustrate his strategy. By drawing on examples as diverse as interactive art exhibits, the music of Glenn Gould and Jim Morrison, and extending to nuclear waste sites, he envisions a not only better ways to live with technology, but ways to make technology more humane. Heim's writing is both eloquent and accessible making "Virtual Realism" an insightful study for anyone interested in the impact of technology on our social and physical environment.

Michael Heim, in Virtual Realism , "dedicated to those minds at large who find no home in the established schools", explores the many ways in which virtual reality is increasingly influencing our lives. These techniques are both challenging the content of the normative design arts, and extending the boundaries of thought.

VR realism mixes traditional aesthetic criticism with aditional questions of immersion, interactivity, and information intensity. Virtual realism steers a course between the idealists who believe computerised life represents a higher form of existence and the down-to-earth realists who fear that computer simulations threaten ecological and local values. Further, a spacemaker is a designer of cyberspace constructs like a filmaker.

Riley, in The Visible, The Visual and The Vicarious, comments, "The real landscape often gives rise to an internally experienced landscape that is far richer that the "real" landscape. Such fantasy landscapes are open-ended in interpretation and may define the boundaries of postmodern existence."

Virtual, imaginary, and film art landscapes are more numerous and perhaps more significant than real landscapes.

Copyright 1998 Robert Hotten

This is the latest in a series of books by Michael Heim on the human changes, both good and bad, wrought by the introduction of computers. Virtual Realism in particular seeks to find a balance between a retreat from technology and the wholesale embrace of it without regard for the consequences. He starts out defining the technology of virtual reality in such a way as to understand the strong reactions to it. He follows with a series of essays seeking to find the balance implied by the title. This is an accessible but always interesting book not requiring an extensive technical or philosophical background. His analysis is not exhaustive or linear, but that is not his intent. He brings up and ponders the big issues involved with human adoption of and adaptation to a powerful new technology.

This is a major work on the redesign of the human/computer interface. It is well written but very deep. Excellent academic research is clearly demonstrate throughout. I would not say, however, that it is an easy read.

Engineering research does not generally have to be as strongly academically founded as scientific research. The controlling factor is "does it work," not how does it relate to previous work. This tendency leads to problems when it is necessary to do multidisciplinary work involving both engineering and science. The redesign of the human/computer interface is just such a problem.

As an engineer working independently in this field, I have often wished for the time and resources to do proper academic studies. Paul Dourish has now done them for me. All my future publications will have to show consistency with this book, show they are clearly outside the area covered by this book, or show the book is wrong. The last alternative is most unlikely. I think I can show my work, based on Darwinism and ontology, complies with the first option. I am certain that my work will be stronger for this effort.

A very interesting, and yet clear to read and follow book. "Where the action is" was a reading reference for my qualifier exam and after reading it I was hooked up to HCI forever. Very exciting and a "must read" for all HCI researchers.

This is one of the more influential books to grace the HCI academic's shelf in recent years. Dourish's thesis, that tangible and social computing have their genesis in a sense of embeddedness in our real world and not some foreign, constructed environment known as "The OS," is stimulating material but does not dramatically change my outlook on the topic. However, it does a good job of providing useful terms and theory to support our intuition surrounding why TUIs and CSCW are useful things. I also believe that the author's goal of providing a sound philosophical and theoretical groundwork for HCI in general is a great idea, as there are few works that deliver well on this promise. As someone with limited exposure to computer-supported cooperative work before reading this book, I have to say that Dourish also has some excellent (and very readable) reviews of the most important literature in both tangible and social computing, giving a newcomer solid ground from which to consider new research.

One of the strong sides of this book is that it makes it really easy for the reader - things are generally summarised and repeated exactly in the right places. It can serve as an introduction to the world of phenomenology, sociology and philosophy as pertaining to Human-Computer Interfaces.
It felt more like a mixture between a proposal and an introductory philosophical treatise than an overview of the current state of the field (it carries the word "foundations" in its title for a reason).
After reading it however, I still wasn't convinced that "social computing", "tangible computing" and "embodied interaction" really add up to a construct that can effectively inform the design of new HCI devices even though this claim was repeated throughout the book almost like a prayer wheel.
Interestingly, while the book points out the meaning of embodyment in already existing work practices, it fails to give any strategies on how these theories can actually be applied to the design of effective new HCI devices that go beyond the shiny toys produced at MIT Media Lab.
The loophole seems to be that embodied practices can only arise once the tools are defined, so that it is hard to predict what practices will be used once it's out there - since the way we use tools is largely improvisatory, as Dourish points out.
I also can not stop to wonder if the term "embodyment" is akin to "multi-media" - a belief system that can mean so many things that it effectively desintegrates sooner or later.

So, while it left me not exactly sure that there really is another end to it, it was certainly worth and inspiring to work through this book in a thorough manner - I now feel courageous enough to put my nose into "Being and Time" by Heidegger.
A friendly way to get your brain going!