[huml-comment] FW: [www-vrml] Fw: Being There - The new FREE book onPresence

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Note that there are significant overlaps in this and what 
HumanML categories seek to codify.

len

-----Original Message-----
From: George Birbilis [mailto:birbilis@kagi.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 8:01 AM
To: www-vrml@web3d.org
Subject: [www-vrml] Fw: Being There - The new FREE book on Presence


this might be of interest (VR, medicine,
neuro-psychology)...

> Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 2:31 PM
> Subject: FW: Being There - The new FREE book on Presence


Being There - The new FREE book on Presence
Please Distribute
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FREE Electronic Book:


"Being There: Concepts, Effects and Measurements of User
Presence in Synthetic Environments"


2003, Emerging Communication Series, IOS Press, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands.


Edited by G. Riva, F. Davide, W.A. IJsselsteijn


Preface by F. Biocca


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FREE Download in PDF format. Link from the following web
site - http://www.cybertherapy.info - together with many
other free electronic books.
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INTRODUCTION


What do people do at work? They go to meetings. How do we
deal with meetings? What is it about sitting face to face
that we need to capture? We need software that makes it
possible to hold a meeting with distributed participants --
a meeting with interactivity and feeling, such that, in the
future, people will prefer being telepresent.

Bill Gates, 1999

According to different analysts, during the next ten years a
new infrastructural paradigm will emerge, the 'Ambient
Intelligent Space'. This is the collection of
infrastructural technologies, applications and services that
will enable the seamless interoperation of the applications
and services of Ambient Intelligence: a pervasive and
unobtrusive intelligence in the surrounding environment
supporting the activities and interactions of the users.

However, there are many outstanding requirements in order to
reduce the lag between the availability of (hardware)
technologies and the availability of applications and
services based on those technologies, including support for
rapid prototyping, user acceptance trials, real life
experiments and demonstrations. In particular, achieving
this vision will require the development of more natural
ways of interacting with computer and information technology
systems. This for example, will help to eliminate barriers
that arise from difficulties that people experience in using
current interaction devices such as screens and keyboards.

A more advanced human-centered interaction with systems
would provide users with a sense of being there, close to if
not equivalent to the experience of actual presence.
Creating this sense of presence remains a major challenge
and is leading to the development of new interdisciplinary
research, combining cognitive psychology, haptic (sense of
touch) studies, computer graphics and multimedia design,
advanced communication theory and socio-cultural issues. A
theory of presence, emerging through this interdisciplinary
research, that explores the cognitive and affective roots of
sensory perception, is expected to give rise to the design
of innovative systems that offer "richer" experiences than
any current media and communication technologies.


This book is an attempt to help designer and researchers in
reaching this goal, by developing a better understanding of
how a real sense of presence can be achieved. It involves
learning and discovering what is going on when people use
their senses to understand and interpret their surrounding
environment and when they interact with objects in that
environment. For the complexity of the discussed topic, we
have put a great deal of thought and effort in the
definition of the structure of the book and the sequence of
the contributions, so that those in search of a specific
reading path will be rewarded. To this end we the book is
divided in four main Sections comprising 21 chapters
overall.


Part I - Presence: Past, Present and Future
Part II - Presence: Theory and Methods
Part III: Presence in Practice: Applications
Part IV: Social Presence: Creating a Common Ground


------------------------------------------------------------
--------
FREE Download in PDF format from the following web site -
http://www.cybertherapy.info - together with many other free
electronic books.


Please support the Series and its FREE approach: ask your
institution to order the paper version of the book.
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--

------------------------------
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Istituto Auxologico Italiano
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