Paperback : $160.00
Why do humans long to reach beyond the confines of our planet? Why, in an age when our voices routinely bounce off satellites to around the world and back, hasn't a human set foot on the moon for 30 years?
A visionary work by the most provocative and original thinker on technology and human communication since Marshall McLuhan, "RealSpace" traces the neat marriage of communication and transportation --talking and walking--that recently ended in a jarring separation. Throughout recent history, Levinson shows, rail lines and telegraphs, cars and radios, airplanes and television have been coupled in a synergy that allowed us to reach the places we heard about. But with the invention of the Internet and cell phones, our verbal reach has exceeded our corporeal grasp.
With a lucid, reflective style that spans philosophy, science fiction, religion, and technology, "RealSpace" reopens the final frontier, delving into the roots of our desire to know what's out there and exploring how we might actually make it one day. Packed with exciting, innovative, even revolutionary thinking about our future," RealSpace" is essential reading for everyone who has ever sat at a desk, gazed into the distance and imagined boarding a space shuttle.
Why do humans long to reach beyond the confines of our planet? Why, in an age when our voices routinely bounce off satellites to around the world and back, hasn't a human set foot on the moon for 30 years?
A visionary work by the most provocative and original thinker on technology and human communication since Marshall McLuhan, "RealSpace" traces the neat marriage of communication and transportation --talking and walking--that recently ended in a jarring separation. Throughout recent history, Levinson shows, rail lines and telegraphs, cars and radios, airplanes and television have been coupled in a synergy that allowed us to reach the places we heard about. But with the invention of the Internet and cell phones, our verbal reach has exceeded our corporeal grasp.
With a lucid, reflective style that spans philosophy, science fiction, religion, and technology, "RealSpace" reopens the final frontier, delving into the roots of our desire to know what's out there and exploring how we might actually make it one day. Packed with exciting, innovative, even revolutionary thinking about our future," RealSpace" is essential reading for everyone who has ever sat at a desk, gazed into the distance and imagined boarding a space shuttle.
1: Bicycling into Outer Space: The Limits of Cyberspace, The Lure of Outer Space, What Went Wrong in Outer Space?, Space Re-Packaged, Robots and Missed Golden Opportunities 2: Talking and Walking: The Reason They Rhyme, The Biological Antiquity of the Coupling, Human Roads, Rail Roads, Out of the Box, Impulse Power and Partners, Global Villages, The Beginnings of Space Travel and Cyberspace 3: Breaking Out of Windows and Cyberspace The Appeal of Interaction, The Medium of Media and the Real World, Two Kinds of Java in the World, Ecologies of Transport and Communication 4: The Cellphone as Antidote to the Internet Dissolving What Glues Us to the Screen, Talk Again Leads the Way to Walking, on Earth 5: The Only Way Forward from California is Up: What's Keeping Us Down? Realpolitik versus Realspace, The Entropy of Details and Science Fiction, Philosophy versus Science 6: Further from Home, Closer to Truth Mirrors: Pitfalls and Opportunities, Telescopes into Microscopes, Apartment, City, Universe 7: Is Democracy the Best Launchpad to Space? War and Peace, Application and Invention, Microsoft Space?, Democracy's Partners 8: Old-Time Religion as a New Wing to Space Conquistadors to the Stars?, Coinciding Heavens, How Would Religion Make Its Contribution?, Playful Space, 9: Would You Want To Live Near a Star Named HD 209458? Old Names for New Worlds, Spacefaring Metaphors, The Comforts of Home in Space 10: Real Robots Don't Cry Robotic Merits, Limitations of Programming, Knowledge in Tiers and Tears, Robots with Emotions? 11: Realspace in an Age of Terrorism Two-Edged Swords of Communication, Anthrax and E-Mail, Planes and Rockets: Reversal of Symbols?, Starport at the World Trade Center, A Last Word About Images, Reality, and Opportunity
Paul Levinson's The Soft Edge (1997) and Digital McLuhan (1999) have been the subject of major articles in The New York Times and Wired and have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and six other languages. Digital McLuhan won the Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship, and Levinson's science fiction novel The Silk Code won the 2000 Locus Award for Best First Novel. Additional science fiction novels include Borrowed Tides (2001) and The Consciousness Plague (2002). He has appeared on 'Inside Edition', CNN, The History Channel, CSPAN, Fox News, NPR, the BBC, and the CBC. He was President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, 1998-2001, and is Professor and Chair of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City.
"...engagingly humane and commonsensical." - Albert Borgmann, author of Holding on to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium"...a lucid argument for injecting new passion into the exploration of outer space.He is one of our very best writers on technology because he presents the big picture." - Michael Heim, author of The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality
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