The Virtual [Paperback]

Rob Shields (Author)

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Product Details

Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (Dec 23 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0415281814
ISBN-13: 978-0415281812
Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 13 x 1.5 cm
Shipping Weight: 272 g
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #568,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

Rob Shields has written an encyclopedia of the virtual that will prove to be as indispensable to the layman as to the researcher.
–Pierre Levy, Canada Research Chair on Collective Intelligence, University of Ottawa

Shields succeeds in removing the mask of The Virtual, revealing its productivity, ubiquity, and logic. The resulting text offers a compelling social critique of abstraction-on our screens, in the workplace, and within the very forces of globalization.
–Greg Elmer, Boston College

Book Description

This book looks at the origins and the many contemporary meanings of the virtual. Rob Shields shows how the construction of virtual worlds has a long history. He examines the many forms of faith and hysteria that have surrounded computer technologies in recent years. Moving beyond the technologies themselves he shows how the virtual plays a role in our daily lives at every level. The virtual is also an essential concept needed to manage innovation and risk. It is real but not actual, ideal but not abstract. The virtual, he argues, has become one of the key organizing principles of contemporary society in the public realms of politics, business and consumption as well as in our private lives.

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Inside This Book (Learn More)

First Sentence
Do you think that there is anything new about the virtual? Read the first page

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Concordance

Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index

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Amazon.com: 3.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

5.0 out of 5 stars best book so far on the virtual, Feb 18 2012

By David Golumbia - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: The Virtual (Paperback)

this is the best book currently available on the notion of the virtual, because Shields takes the concept seriously and does not blur the Deleuze-and-Guattarian notion of "the virtual" (which may variously refer to the space of all possible or even impossible becomings and imaginings) with the idea of cyberspace-as-virtual or Virtual Reality per se. Along with Brian Massumi's Parables of the Virtual it is one of the only must-read, scholarly treatments of the subject.

4 of 10 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars pages missing from book!, Oct 31 2004

By Megan J. Sapnar "mediabooks" - Published on Amazon.com

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: The Virtual (Paperback)

The content of The Virtual is quite interesting, Shields does a nice job historicizing the terms and contributing to the debates on the implications of a shifting relationship between the virtually real and the material. HOWEVER, a huge problem if you're interested in this book for research: the last 30 pages were not bound in the new copy of this book that I ordered through Amazon. No notes to chapters 3 through 9, no bibliography, and no index. In that respect, it's just not useful.

› Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews 3.0 out of 5 stars