Mediatheory: A Postmodern Cosmology of Virtual Reality?
Version 1.1 ©1997 Cyberhobbit

Abstract:
This dissertation deals with mediatheory and its concept of reality. It tries to analyse the information-revolution as a paradigm-shift, that changes the perception and very definition of reality. Starting from an introduction into mediatheory, it wants to give insight in the way how new media change the very basics of reality and our lives. Cyberspace, Cyberia and virtual reality become therefore analysed in terms of how these virtual environments offer spaces for communication and living. Their physical as well as biological laws shall be analysed. A mainfocus is also put on humans in connection with new media, the relationship between medium and user, how new media question the status of being human, as well as how new identity-constructions become possible. The methodology shall be a radical mediatheoretical point of view, based on Marshall McLuhan and Agentur Bilwet, performed as Ambulante Wissenschaft.. Furthermore the terminology is strongly based of French postmodernism.

Don't worry! It's not just one of these boring academic readings you'll find thousands of in the library. So if you don't like text, go for the Pictures, the Sounds, Quicktime Virtual Reality, the Video or the Fairytale inside!

Fasten your seatbelts and get ready for the Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: Launching the Subject

1.1. Writing about Mediatheory: the Mediatext
1.2. The Question of Methodology: Ambulante Wissenschaft
1.3. The History of Paradigms: a Questioning of Reality

2. Mediatheories: Content, Form and Software

2.1. Marshall McLuhan: Mediatheory as Form Analysis
2.2. Cyberspace: from Science Fiction to Social Reality
2.3. Cyberia: the Discovery of the Fourth Dimension
2.4. Virtual Reality: a Postmodern Concept of Reality

2.4.1. Jean Baudrillard: Simulationism as Mediatheory
2.4.2. Paul Virilio: the Dissolution of Time
2.4.3. Conclusion of Chapter 2.4.

2.5. The Physics of Cyberspace: the Possibility of Timetravelling?
2.6. The Biology of Cyberspace: Digital Creatures in a Virtual World
2.7. Cyborg: Being Human in a Mediated Age

2.7.1. No Drugs without Media, No Media without Drugs
2.7.2. Total Freedom: the Concept of Virtual Identity
2.7.3 The Datadandy: Virtual Identity in the Nineties
2.7.4. The Esoteric Essence: a Strive for Immortality

3. Heterotopias: No End, No Conclusion, No Criticism

Extras:

The Cyberhobbit: An alternative fairytale introduction

Excursion: Maarten Dillinger: basics of a fivedimensional worldview

Bibliography

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