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The Social Life Of Avatars
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Book Synopsis The Social Life of Avatars by : Ralph Schroeder
Download or read book The Social Life of Avatars written by Ralph Schroeder and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtual reality (VR) technology has been developed commercially since the early 1990s [1]. Yet it is only with the growth of the Internet and other high-bandwidth links that VR systems have increasingly become networked to allow users to share the same virtual environment (VE). Shared YEs raise a number of interesting questions: what is the difference between face-to-face interaction and interaction between persons inside YEs? How does the appearance of the "avatar" - as the graphical representation of the user has become known - change the nature of interaction? And what governs the formation of virtual communities? This volume brings together contributions from social scientists and computer scientists who have conducted research on social interaction in various types of YEs. Two previous volumes in this CSCW book series [2, 3] have examined related aspects of research on YEs - social navigation and collaboration - although they do not always deal with VRIVEs in the sense that it is used here (see the definition in Chapter 1). The aim of this volume is to explore how people interact with each other in computer-generated virtual worlds.
Book Synopsis The Social Life of Avatars by : Ralph Schroeder
Download or read book The Social Life of Avatars written by Ralph Schroeder and published by . This book was released on 2002-01-10 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtual reality technology has been developed commercially since the early 1990s but it is only recently, with the popularity of the internet, that it has become feasible to link many users simultaneously in shared virtual environments. This raises a number of interesting questions such as: what is the difference between face-to-face and avatar-to-avatar interaction? What patterns govern the formation of virtual communities? How does the appearance of the avatar change the nature of the communication? There has been much speculation about issues such as these but research is still at a relatively early stage. This is the first book to bring together work from relevant disciplines to form a reference guide for practitioners, students and researchers interested in how we interact in computer-generated environments. It contains contributions from most of the key people in this area (including Microsoft Research's Virtual Worlds Group) and presents their findings in a way which is accessible to readers who are new to this field or who come from related areas. It is divided into 2 parts; chapters 2-6 deal with internet-based virtual worlds which have been widely used by the public; chapters 7-10 deal with networked VR systems which have been primarily used in pilot studies and research. Some chapters take the viewpoint of a participant observer, whilst others take a more experimental approach and assess the results of relevant trials. This book will be essential reading for anyone involved in developing, using or researching virtual worlds, and will also be of interest to students on courses such as VR and Computer-mediated communication.
Download or read book I, Avatar written by Mark Stephen Meadows and published by New Riders. This book was released on 2007-12-27 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is an avatar? Why are there nearly a billion of them, and who is using them? Do avatars impact our real lives, or are they just video game conceits? Is an avatar an inspired rendering of its creator’s inner self, or is it just one among millions of anonymous vehicles clogging the online freeways? Can we use our avatars to really connect with people, or do they just isolate us? And as we become more like our avatars do they become more like us? In I, Avata r, Mark Stephen Meadows answers some of these questions, but more importantly, he raises hundreds of others in his exploration of avatars and the fascinating possibilities they hold. His examination of avatars through the lenses of sociology, psychology, politics, history, and art, he will change the way you look at even a simple online profile and revolutionize the idea of avatars as part of our lives, whether first or second.
Book Synopsis Avatars at Work and Play by : Ralph Schroeder
Download or read book Avatars at Work and Play written by Ralph Schroeder and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-07-08 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Avatars at Work and Play brings together contributions from leading social scientists and computer scientists who have conducted research on virtual environments used for collaboration and online gaming. They present a well-rounded and state-of-the-art overview of current applications of multi-user virtual environments, ranging from highly immersive virtual reality systems to internet-based virtual environments on personal computers. The volume is a follow-up to a previous essay collection, ‘The Social Life of Avatars’, which explored general issues in this field. This collection goes further, examining uses of shared virtual environments in practical settings such as scientific collaboration, distributed meetings, building models together, and others. It also covers online gaming in virtual environments, which has attracted hundreds of thousands of users and presents an opportunity for studying a myriad of social issues. Covering both ‘work’ and ‘play’, the volume brings together issues common to the two areas, including: What kind of avatar appearance is suitable for different kinds of interaction? How best to foster collaboration and promote usable shared virtual spaces? What kinds of activities work well in different types of virtual environments and systems?
Book Synopsis Avatars at Work and Play by : Ralph Schroeder
Download or read book Avatars at Work and Play written by Ralph Schroeder and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-02-06 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Avatars at Work and Play brings together contributions from leading social scientists and computer scientists who have conducted research on virtual environments used for collaboration and online gaming. They present a well-rounded and state-of-the-art overview of current applications of multi-user virtual environments, ranging from highly immersive virtual reality systems to internet-based virtual environments on personal computers. The volume is a follow-up to a previous essay collection, ‘The Social Life of Avatars’, which explored general issues in this field. This collection goes further, examining uses of shared virtual environments in practical settings such as scientific collaboration, distributed meetings, building models together, and others. It also covers online gaming in virtual environments, which has attracted hundreds of thousands of users and presents an opportunity for studying a myriad of social issues. Covering both ‘work’ and ‘play’, the volume brings together issues common to the two areas, including: What kind of avatar appearance is suitable for different kinds of interaction? How best to foster collaboration and promote usable shared virtual spaces? What kinds of activities work well in different types of virtual environments and systems?
Book Synopsis Being There Together by : Ralph Schroeder
Download or read book Being There Together written by Ralph Schroeder and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-04 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Virtual environments provide places for 'being there together', for avatars to interact with each other in computer-generated spaces. They range from immersive systems in which people have life-size tracked avatar bodies to large-scale spaces such as Second Life where populations of users socialize in persistent virtual worlds. This book draws together research on how people interact in virtual environments: What difference does avatar appearance make? How do avatars collaborate and play together? How do the type of system and the space affect how people engage with each other? How does interaction between avatars differ from face-to-face interaction? What can social scientists learn from experiments and other studies of how people interact in virtual environments? What are the ethical and social issues in doing this research, and in the uses of this technology? And how do virtual environments differ from other communication technologies such as videoconferencing systems and other new media? This book is a state-of-the art survey of research on these topics, and offers a framework for understanding this technology and its future implications.
Download or read book Avatars! written by Bruce Damer and published by Addison Wesley Longman. This book was released on 1998 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With "Avatars!", readers can grab their avatar (a digital representation of themselves) and run to the nearest virtual world where they can experience the Internet. "Avatars!" focuses on what people do inside virtual worlds, such as building three-dimensional structures, navigating through the worlds, and learning digital etiquette and social interaction skills. A CD-ROM provides readers with ready-to-run worlds that connect them with thousands of other people on the Internet, and which are referenced in a companion Web site.
Download or read book Hello Avatar written by B. Coleman and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-11-04 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of our many modes of online identity and how we live on the continuum between the virtual and the real. Hello Avatar! Or, {llSay(0, "Hello, Avatar!"); is a tiny piece of user-friendly code that allows us to program our virtual selves. In Hello Avatar, B. Coleman examines a crucial aspect of our cultural shift from analog to digital: the continuum between online and off-, what she calls the “x-reality” that crosses between the virtual and the real. She looks at the emergence of a world that is neither virtual nor real but encompasses a multiplicity of network combinations. And she argues that it is the role of the avatar to help us express our new agency—our new power to customize our networked life. By avatar, Coleman means not just the animated figures that populate our screens but the gestalt of images, text, and multimedia that make up our online identities—in virtual worlds like Second Life and in the form of email, video chat, and other digital artifacts. Exploring such network activities as embodiment, extreme (virtual) violence, and the work in virtual reality labs, and offering sidebar interviews with designers and practitioners, she argues that what is new is real-time collaboration and copresence, the way we make connections using networked media and the cultures we have created around this. The star of this drama of expanded horizons is the networked subject—all of us who represent aspects of ourselves and our work across the mediascape.
Book Synopsis Coming of Age in Second Life by : Tom Boellstorff
Download or read book Coming of Age in Second Life written by Tom Boellstorff and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Millions of people around the world today spend portions of their lives in online virtual worlds. Second Life is one of the largest of these virtual worlds. The residents of Second Life create communities, buy property and build homes, go to concerts, meet in bars, attend weddings and religious services, buy and sell virtual goods and services, find friendship, fall in love--the possibilities are endless, and all encountered through a computer screen. At the time of its initial publication in 2008, Coming of Age in Second Life was the first book of anthropology to examine this thriving alternate universe. Tom Boellstorff conducted more than two years of fieldwork in Second Life, living among and observing its residents in exactly the same way anthropologists traditionally have done to learn about cultures and social groups in the so-called real world. He conducted his research as the avatar "Tom Bukowski," and applied the rigorous methods of anthropology to study many facets of this new frontier of human life, including issues of gender, race, sex, money, conflict and antisocial behavior, the construction of place and time, and the interplay of self and group. Coming of Age in Second Life shows how virtual worlds can change ideas about identity and society. Bringing anthropology into territory never before studied, this book demonstrates that in some ways humans have always been virtual, and that virtual worlds in all their rich complexity build upon a human capacity for culture that is as old as humanity itself. Now with a new preface in which the author places his book in light of the most recent transformations in online culture, Coming of Age in Second Life remains the classic ethnography of virtual worlds.
Book Synopsis Avatars, Book Three: Kingdom of Twilight by : Tui T. Sutherland
Download or read book Avatars, Book Three: Kingdom of Twilight written by Tui T. Sutherland and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2008-11-11 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a post-apocalyptic future, four teenagers, created by mythological gods and goddesses to be pawns in a game, prove once more to be unpredictable as they battle in Africa and wander through the underworlds.
Book Synopsis Mobile Technologies by : Gerard Goggin
Download or read book Mobile Technologies written by Gerard Goggin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-01-13 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In light of emerging forms of software, interfaces, cultures of uses, and media practices associated with mobile media, this collection investigates the various ways in which mobile media is developing in different cultural, linguistic, social, and national settings. Specifically, contributors consider the promises and politics of mobile media and its role in the dynamic social and gender relations configured in the boundaries between public and private spheres. The collection is genuinely interdisciplinary, as well as international in its range, with contributors and studies from China, Japan, Korea, Italy, Norway, France, Belgium, Britain, and Australia.
Book Synopsis Media and Social Life by : Mary Beth Oliver
Download or read book Media and Social Life written by Mary Beth Oliver and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-26 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our use of media touches on almost all aspects of our social lives, be they friendships, parent-child relationships, emotional lives, or social stereotypes. How we understand ourselves and others is now largely dependent on how we perceive ourselves and others in media, how we interact with one another through mediated channels, and how we share, construct, and understand social issues via our mediated lives. This volume highlights cutting edge scholarship from preeminent scholars in media psychology that examines how media intersect with our social lives in three broad areas: media and the self; media and relationships; and social life in emerging media. The scholars in this volume not only provide insightful and up-to-date examinations of theorizing and research that informs our current understanding of the role of media in our social lives, but they also detail provocative and valuable roadmaps that will form that basis of future scholarship in this crucially important and rapidly evolving media landscape.
Book Synopsis The Presentation of Self in Contemporary Social Life by : David Shulman
Download or read book The Presentation of Self in Contemporary Social Life written by David Shulman and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2016-04-28 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Presentation of Self in Contemporary Social Life covers the popular theories of Erving Goffman, and shows modern applications of dramaturgical analysis in a wide range of social contexts. David Shulman’s innovative new text demonstrates how Goffman’s ideas, first introduced in 1959, continue to inspire research into how we manage the impressions that others form about us. He synthesizes the work of contemporary scholars who use dramaturgical approaches from several disciplines, who recognize that many values, social norms, and laws have changed since Goffman’s time, and that contemporary society offers significant new forms of impression management that we can engage in and experience. After a general introduction to dramaturgical sociology, readers will see many examples of how Goffman’s ideas can provide powerful insights into familiar aspects of contemporary life today, including business and the workplace, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and the digital world.
Book Synopsis Illuminating Social Life by : Peter Kivisto
Download or read book Illuminating Social Life written by Peter Kivisto and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2012-11-02 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sixth edition of Peter Kivisto’s popular anthology, Illuminating Social Life, continues to demonstrate to students how social theories can help them make sense of the swirling events and perplexing phenomena that they encounter in their daily lives. A perfect complement for sociological theory courses, this updated edition includes 13 original essays by leading scholars in the field that help students better understand and appreciate the relevance of social theory. Once again, Peter Kivisto′s collection illuminates the connection between sociological theory and the realities that students are faced with every day —from the Internet, alcohol use, and body building to shopping malls, the working world, and fast-food restaurants. Contributor to the SAGE Teaching Innovations and Professional Development Award
Download or read book Avatar, Assembled written by Jaime Banks and published by Digital Formations. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Avatar, Assembled is a curated volume that unpacks videogame and virtual world avatars--not as a monolithic phenomenon (as they are usually framed) but as sociotechnical assemblages, pieced together from social (human-like) features like voice and gesture to technical (machine-like) features like graphics and glitches. Each chapter accounts for the empirical, theoretical, technical, and popular understandings of these avatar "components"--60 in total--altogether offering a nuanced explication of avatars-as-assemblages as they matter in contemporary society and in individual experience. The volume is a "crossover" piece in that, while it delves into complex ideas, it is written in a way that will be accessible and interesting to students, researchers, designers, and practitioners alike.
Book Synopsis Avatar Creation by : Hailey L. Mills
Download or read book Avatar Creation written by Hailey L. Mills and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rooted in the Theory of Social Construction of Reality and informed by media and gender portrayal and virtual communities research, this study examines how beauty is socially constructed in Second Life. Specifically, a content analysis of 360 still images of female avatars was conducted to understand how people construct beauty in a virtual community. Findings suggest that people chose gender stereotypical images even when they have the free choice to create any avatar they desire. Trendy and sex kitten/sensual beauty types were the most-portrayed beauty types. Almost all the female avatars had a perfect body size. And more than 80% of the avatars coded in this study had light skin. In addition, this study found a significant difference in beauty type among avatars with different amounts of body coverage and a significant difference in beauty type among different types of products. However, no significant difference was found in beauty type between avatars with different skin color nor was there a significant difference in beauty type among avatars with different body sizes. Overall, this study provides valuable insights in understanding how beauty is socially constructed in the virtual world and advances the theory of social construction of reality in today's dynamic environment.
Book Synopsis Illuminating Social Life by : Peter Kivisto
Download or read book Illuminating Social Life written by Peter Kivisto and published by Pine Forge Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illuminating Social Life has enjoyed increasing popularity with each edition. It is the only book designed for undergraduate teaching that shows today's students how classical and contemporary social theories can be used to shed new light on such topics as the internet, the world of work, fast food restaurants, shopping malls, alcohol use, body building, sales and service, and new religious movements.A perfect complement for the sociological theory course, it offers 13 original essays by leading scholars in the field who are also experienced undergraduate theory teachers. Substantial introductions by the editor link the applied essays to a complete review of the classical and modern social theories used in the book.
