Virtually His

Virtually His
Author: Gennita Low
Publisher: MIRA
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2007-05-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1426800770

Chosen to be the ultimate secret operative, Helen Roston has become the most dangerous woman in the world. Two years of training and she's now ready for the final phase—a risky combination of virtual reality and a mind-altering serum. When her mysterious and faceless "trainer" syncs his mind to hers using the program, she's amazed at her sizzling response to his virtual touch. But Helen likes to be in control. She's not going to beg for more. Helen's final test is a challenging mission, picked by the other government agencies whose candidates lost out to her. To succeed, she has to put herself completely in the hands of her trainer, a man she's not sure she can trust. But all of COS Command are counting on her. She cannot fail.

Virtually Normal

Virtually Normal
Author: Andrew Sullivan
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2011-05-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0307789276

An unprecedented work from the brilliant young editor of The New Republic--who is celebrated also as an incisive defender of the equality of homosexuals--Virtually Normal is an impassioned, reasoned, subtle, and uncompromising political and moral treatise that will set the terms of the homosexuality debate for the foreseeable future.

Virtually Hers

Virtually Hers
Author: Gennita Low
Publisher: Samhain Pub Limited
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2010
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781605047980

Elite black-ops agent Helen "Hell" Roston is the leading guinea pig in a dangerous combination of virtual reality training and a mind-altering serum. And the very real sexual chemistry that sizzles between Hell and her trainer is messing with her head even more. Warning: explicit sex.

Virtually Sacred

Virtually Sacred
Author: Robert M. Geraci
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2014-06-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199379971

Millions of users have taken up residence in virtual worlds, and in those worlds they find opportunities to revisit and rewrite their religious lives. Robert M. Geraci argues that virtual worlds and video games have become a locus for the satisfaction of religious needs, providing many users with devoted communities, opportunities for ethical reflection, a meaningful experience of history and human activity, and a sense of transcendence. Using interviews, surveys, and his own first-hand experience within the virtual worlds, Geraci shows how World of Warcraft and Second Life provide participants with the opportunity to rethink what it means to be religious in the contemporary world. Not all participants use virtual worlds for religious purposes, but many online residents use them to rearrange or replace religious practice as designers and users collaborate in the production of a new spiritual marketplace. Using World of Warcraft and Second Life as case studies, this book shows that many residents now use virtual worlds to re-imagine their traditions and work to restore them to "authentic" sanctity, or else replace religious institutions with virtual communities that provide meaning and purpose to human life. For some online residents, virtual worlds are even keys to a post-human future where technology can help us transcend mortal life. Geraci argues that World of Warcraft and Second Life are "virtually sacred" because they do religious work. They often do such work without regard for-and frequently in conflict with-traditional religious institutions and practices; ultimately they participate in our sacred landscape as outsiders, competitors, and collaborators.

Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality

Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality
Author: Elias Aboujaoude
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2012-02-06
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0393340546

"Instantly engaging and eminently accessible . . . . an enlightening and cautionary exploration of an increasingly intrusive aspect of modern society." —Booklist While the Internet can enhance well-being, Elias Aboujaoude has spent years treating patients whose lives have been profoundly disturbed by it. Part of the danger lies in how the Internet allows us to act with exaggerated confidence, sexiness, and charisma. Aboujaoude dubs this new self our “e-personality” and argues that its traits are too potent to be confined online. Offline, too, we’re becoming impatient, unfocused, and urge-driven. Virtually You draws from Aboujaoude’s personal and professional experience to highlight this new phenomenon. The first scrutiny of the virtual world’s transformative power on our psychology, Virtually You demonstrates how real life is being reconfigured in the image of a chat room, and how our identity increasingly resembles that of our avatar.

Living Virtually

Living Virtually
Author: Don Heider
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2009
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781433101304

Virtual worlds are most often three dimensional locales, where people create virtual personae (called avatars) who come to play, socialize, and work. This edited collection of groundbreaking research on virtual worlds offers a wide-ranging look at the sociology, politics, and communication practices in virtual worlds from a group of scholars in the United States and abroad.

Virtually Human

Virtually Human
Author: Martine Rothblatt
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2014-09-09
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1466847042

Virtually Human explores what the not-too-distant future will look like when cyberconsciousness—simulation of the human brain via software and computer technology—allows our consciousness to be present forever. Meet Bina48, the world's most sentient robot, commissioned by Martine Rothblatt and created by Hanson Robotics. Bina48 is a nascent Mindclone of Martine's wife that can engage in conversation, answer questions, and even have spontaneous thoughts that are derived from multimedia data in a Mindfile created by the real Bina. If you're active on Twitter or Facebook, share photos through Instagram, or blogging regularly, you're already on your way to creating a Mindfile—a digital database of your thoughts, memories, feelings, and opinions that is essentially a back-up copy of your mind. Soon, this Mindfile can be made conscious with special software—Mindware—that mimics the way human brains organize information, create emotions and achieve self-awareness. This may sound like science-fiction A.I. (artificial intelligence), but the nascent technology already exists. Thousands of software engineers across the globe are working to create cyberconsciousness based on human consciousness and the Obama administration recently announced plans to invest in a decade-long Brain Activity Map project. Virtually Human is the only book to examine the ethical issues relating to cyberconsciousness and Rothblatt, with a Ph.D. in medical ethics, is uniquely qualified to lead the dialogue.

War Virtually

War Virtually
Author: Roberto J. González
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520384768

War virtually -- Requiem for a robot -- Pentagon West -- The dark arts -- Juggernaut -- Precogs, Inc. -- Postdata -- Acknowlegements -- Appendix : sub-rosa research.

Love Virtually

Love Virtually
Author: Daniel Glattauer
Publisher: MacLehose Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2013-12-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1623653436

It begins by chance: Leo receives emails in error from an unknown woman called Emmi. Being polite he replies, and Emmi writes back. A few brief exchanges are all it takes to spark a mutual interest in each other, and soon Emmi and Leo are sharing their innermost secrets and longings. The erotic tension simmers, and, despite Emmi being happily married it seems only a matter of time before they will meet in person. Will their feelings for each other survive the test of a real-life encounter? And if so, what then? Love Virtually is a funny, fast-paced and absorbing experience, with plenty of twists and turns, about a love affair conducted by email.