“Reposter’s Note: The first time I saw someone doubting the term “virtual reality””
“From Interface to Cyberspace: The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality” is a small book Jin Wulun and I translated it at the end of the last century and published it in 2000 by Shanghai Science and Education Press. The following text is a book review written by Xiong Chengyu a few years ago. The title of the original book is The Metaphysics of Virtural Reality, which should be translated into “The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality”. However, the editor of the “Philosopher’s Stone Series” published by Shanghai Science and Technology Education Press may not have done so because of market factors. Instead, the title of one of the chapters “From Interface to Cyberspace” is taken as the main title, and the title of the original book “The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality” becomes the subtitle. This is understandable at first, but this is how the philosopher wrote The philosophical content of his book has been simplified a lot, at least from the perspective of the title. However, it is done, and we may have to accept this fact. Mr. Xiong said that many people now call virtual reality “virtual reality” but this book “is translated as virtual reality.” However, the translation of virtual reality is more reminiscent of other aspects than philosophical aspects. The reason why we translate it as “virtual reality” is to consider that it is a work on philosophy. And it is a very well-written book. This book may be rarely available on the market now, but this book review is still well written, so I put it in my blog. Reading “From Interface to Cyberspace” Xiong Chengyu Since the Canadian novelist William Gibson invented the word “Cyberspace” in 1984, people have begun to think and act in such an existence between reality and virtuality. Discussion. Professor Michael Heim, who received a Ph.D. in science and technology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979, started using portable computers in 1983, and began to contact helmet-mounted displays and data gloves in 1989. Professor Michael Heim, both theoretically and practically, has sufficient reasons to express his views on virtual reality. Realistic views. Professor Heim’s book “The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality” published by Oxford University in 1993 (the Chinese translation is titled “From Interface to Cyberspace: The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality”, Shanghai Science and Technology Education Press, July 2000) included him Completed ten articles published or unpublished between 1989 and 1992. These ten articles have conducted an in-depth discussion on the non-technical issues of virtual reality from the philosophical and humanistic levels. The book can be divided into two parts: The first part includes five such as “Information Madness”, “Logic and Intuition”, “Hypertext Paradise”, “Thought Processing”, “Heidegger and McLuhan: Computers as Partners”. This article mainly discusses the development of computer technology in the fields of word processing, information retrieval, hypertext structure, outline generation, electronic publishing, and the way of human language, thinking, logical expression, reading and writing through the author’s simple expression of personality. The positive and negative effects of the media. The second part includes five articles including “From Interface to Cyberspace”, “The Ontology of Erotic Desires in Cyberspace”, “The Essence of Virtual Reality”, “Suppression of Virtual Reality”, and “Electronic Coffee House Lectures”. The connotation and extension of reality and the author’s own philosophical thinking. In the state of digitalized existence, always emphasizing the human factor and highlighting the natural attributes of people in the process of feeling and cognizing the external world are the distinctive features of this book. In the article “Information Madness”, while admiring the advantages of computer word processing technology in terms of speed, efficiency and network transmission, the author reminds people to pay attention to the harm that computers bring to humans’ natural ability to use language to think: “We finally The price will be paid for this madness. The more information we obtain, the less meaningful it may have. This is the so-called law of diminishing returns. We should not disrespect the expressive ability of language in helping us think.” In the article “Intuition”, the author described the difference between computer logical thinking and human brain thinking and meditation. He pointed out that “libraries are becoming an information center, rather than a place for people to meditate”; calling on “we should restore its original meaning.” In “Hypertext Paradise”, the author questions the God-like way of reading and writing superhuman thinking embodied in hypertext: “There is an uninterrupted flow of information in front of us, so any structure that restricts it to flow should be uninterrupted. Skeptical. For us, there is no single fixed program that can establish a suitable channel for the information that is rolling in.” Computers are increasingly entering the level of human thinking, especially in helping and organizing the thinking process. aspect. However, is computer thinking the same as human brain thinking? The author clearly gave a negative answer. In the article “Thinking Processing”, the author pointed out that the difference between traditional thinking outlines and electronic outlines is that “one structured the knowledge of orderly memory, while the other is a dynamic simulation of the thought process.” Computers are for humans. In other words, is it an opponent or a partner? This is also a question of different opinions. In “Heidegger and McLuhan: Computers as Partners”, the author compares the views of the philosopher Heidegger and the media master McLuhan on the relationship between computers and people and society. After Heidegger recognized the inevitability of the development of computer technology, he expressed his worries about “academic inevitability will be informatized in technology”; while McLuhan’s media development view expresses the importance of technological power in social development. Positive effect, treat computers as partners. Heim’s own point of view is: “There is no need to force a way of agreeing or disapproving, accepting or rejecting it entirely. In our knowledge process, while treating computers as partners, we will notice that when we cooperate with technology, we will What happened.” Virtual Reality (most existing publications are translated into virtual reality, this book is translated into virtual reality), Cyberspace (most existing publications are translated into cyberspace, this book is translated into cyberspace) are the last five The topic discussed in the article is also the essence of this book. In the article “From Interface to Cyberspace”, the author redefines the human-computer interaction interface, extending the interface from the physical form of the keyboard and screen to a point of spiritual interaction: “What is an interface? An interface is two A place where one or more information sources interact face-to-face.” While cyberspace is “a dimension generated by a computer”, “a representation of a reproduced or artificial world, a piece of information generated by our system and feedback to us The world constituted by the information in the system”. The interaction between humans and cyberspace through the interface is a kind of spiritual communication, the harmony between the outside and the inside, the fusion of the spiritual world and the material world. In “The Ontology of Erotic Desires in Cyberspace”, the author further develops his views: “Cyberspace is still a metaphysical laboratory, a tool to test the true meaning of our reality.” The author believes that cyberspace originates from a certain extent. Psychological biological impulse. “Cyberspace as a product belongs to Platonism. Cyberwalkers armed with sensory input devices are sitting in front of us. They seem and do not belong to our world anymore.” Virtual reality is an objective existence. However, is it technology or art? Is it spiritual or material? How do we describe the essence of VR? In the article “The Essence of Virtual Reality”, Dr. Heim summarized the seven different definitions of virtual reality put forward by the researchers before him: simulation, interaction, artificiality, immersion, remoteness, whole body Immersion, network communication. Heim believes that these seven theories or the seven lineups are all exploring in different directions, but none of them have achieved their goals. According to Heim, virtual reality has the following four essential characteristics: 1. Activeness/passiveness; 2. Manipulability/sensibility; 3. Appearance from a long distance; 4. Strengthening of reality. The author believes that he gained his knowledge of virtual reality from Tai Chi practice. We can see that the “active and passive” and “manipulation and feeling” proposed by the author are a set of complementary concepts. They are both spiritual and material; they are both technical and artistic. This is Dr. Heim’s view of virtual reality, his discovery and creation on the basis of his predecessors. After determining the characteristics or essence of virtual reality, human beings are faced with the problem of how to face virtual reality. In the “Electronic Coffee House Lecture”, the author proposed that people on both sides of the United States have two completely different attitudes towards virtual reality. The West Coast sees virtual reality as an ideological form, hoping that virtual reality can “cause a revolution in consciousness”; “The East Coast is thinking of a new type of tool to support current projects and solve established problems.” His opinion is “As usual, the truth is in the middle.” Because virtual reality does not exist independently, it coexists and interacts with human society. Finally, in the article “Virtual Reality Inhibition”, the author fully expounds the relationship between virtual reality and human existence from a philosophical level. The author believes that there are three restrictive factors in human existence: 1. Death is inevitable, and human beings have time limits; 2. Memory and history make everything happen once and forever; 3. Because of the temporary nature of life, fragility and Uncertainty makes people feel pain from time to time. The virtual world relieves the constraints of the real world on people. Therefore, “the ultimate virtual reality is a philosophical experience, perhaps a sublime or awe-inspiring experience. As Kant said, sublime is the realization of one’s insignificance. The shudder that we experienced at the time; when our limited understanding is faced with an infinite virtual world, we will have this feeling.” It can be seen that in the eyes of the author, the virtual world is not entirely an artificial digital space. Or a digital image of the real world; the virtual world coexists with the real world, even a thinking space that is larger in time and space dimensions than the real world. This is what we call the author’s humanized thinking about digital existence. It should be said that with the increasing development of computer technology today, when digitization has gradually penetrated into all levels of human life and society, people are rethinking the relationship between humans and the real world, and the relationship between humans and science and technology. In the early days of the industrial revolution, incidents appeared from time to time to express opposition to technological progress by destroying machines, and to maintain tradition and maintain the natural relationship between man and land. When the information revolution centered on computer technology arrived, people showed shock and fear. In this state of mind, people’s behavior is to study hard and master new technologies. The two states that people exhibit in the two stages of social development actually show the human desire for survival and philosophical thinking about survival. The emergence of virtual reality and cyberspace is an advanced stage in the development of information technology. Facing a four-dimensional space that is plausible with the real world, people’s demand for philosophers is greater than that for scientists. Professor Heim’s work is just such a work born on demand. This book is not much written, but the structure of the text is very hypertextual: philosophers and scientists often appear on the scene, and scientific terminology and philosophical nouns have been flowing between the lines. If you can’t concentrate on reading, you are likely to follow the author’s thoughts. Although the Chinese translation of this book still has some questionable points, we still have to pay tribute to the courage and hardship of the two translators in the face of these many cross-articles, ancient and modern expositions. According to the author, the book has been published in Korean, Japanese, Hungarian, and Polish translations. According to statistics from the Amazon online bookstore in the United States, from 1993 to January 21, 2001, the sales volume of the English version of the book was 8867 copies. From this point of view, the Chinese version of this book was published a bit late. On the fifth day of the first lunar month in 2001 at Lanqiying, Xijiao, Beijing