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Colonizing Virtual Reality
Construction of the Discourse of Virtual Reality,
1984-1992
Chris Chesher
Introduction
New technologies do not appear from nowhere as a mystical spark of inspiration from the
mind of one individual. Nor are they inevitably accepted for their self-evident benefits. A
technology emerges through a process involving broader cultural, linguistic, institutional and
technological contexts. One clear illustration of this process can be drawn with the
appearance of "virtual reality" in 1989, and the subsequent popularization of the idea through
the media.
On June 7, 1989 the computer-aided design software company Autodesk and the eclectic
computer company VPL announced a new technology called "virtual reality."1 In marketing
this new technology (which represented a major shift in thinking about the nature of
computers), the developers and promoters drew on a range of tropes:
VR is shared and objectively present like the physical world, composable like a
work of art, and as unlimited and harmless as a dream. When VR becomes
widely available, around the turn of the century, it will not be seen as a medium
used within physical reality, but rather as an additional reality. VR opens up a
new continent of ideas and possibilities. At Texpo 89 we set foot on the shore of
this continent for the first time.
--VPL Research at Texpo 89, in Rheingold, p.154.
The above quote draws several analogies to introduce Virtual Reality. The statements do not
describe the nature or features of an actual product--they introduce the new idea by
comparison to familiar, comfortable cultural icons. They compare VR with "a work of art," "a
dream," "an additional reality" and a "new continent." With just a few words they have
invoked the traditions of art and representation, psychology and metaphysics, ontological
philosophy, discovery, colonization and the frontier.
This quote is characteristic of the manner in which a new technology (or product, idea,
institution, religion) is introduced. VR originated within marginal subcultures: from science
fiction, cyberpunk, and computer hacker culture, and from institutions including NASA,
computer companies, and the military. Perceiving much wider applications than flight
simulation and remote control, researchers coined the term "virtual reality," and promoted it
as a paradigm shift for computers, and even for the whole society. The shift, though, was not
into empty terrain: it was into such existing fields as entertainment, art, architecture, design

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and medicine. While proponents claimed the idea of VR was new, they positioned it as a
natural and inevitable outgrowth of the past by making connections to familiar values,
ideology and myth. They emphasized its unique advantages over other technologies, but
packaged it in familiar cultural wrapping, constructing a historical narrative with VR as its
necessary conclusion. They then projected VR's development into a utopian future. Moving
from marginal cultural tributaries into the cultural mainstream, though, VR itself had to
change; it needed to remove its uncomfortable associations with social criticism, drugs and
insanity.
Methodology
This essay will analyse the cultural processes by which computer-generated immersive
technologies known as "virtual reality" and "cyberspace" came to mainstream attention and
acceptance. This process is independent of actual technology development, especially in the
case of VR (because working systems are still rare). It is parallel to, but not synonymous with,
the development of the "reality industrial complex"2 --the growth of institutions researching
and marketing VR systems.
The objects of study are documents written about virtual reality. These include VR
researchers' internal papers, magazine articles, promotional material, conference papers,
journal articles, scholarly essays, books and articles posted to the Usenet news conference
sci.virtual.worlds. From a close critical reading of the content, and, as importantly, the way
the content is structured and presented, I intend to explore the nature of the process of
discourse formation: that is, the development of a language terrain3 around virtual reality.
Building a discourse involves establishing a (broadly) shared terminology and agreement
about the nature of the discipline. As I will show, between 1984 and 1992 "virtual reality"
and "cyberspace" underwent a transformation from marginal, speculative concepts into a
(relatively) mainstream, institutionalized discourse.
The tools I will use in this analysis will borrow from several disciplines: literary theory,
sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, poststructuralism, history and historiography. To
discuss the texts I will look at stylistic issues, such as use of metaphor and analogy, word
choice, narrative structures, tone, and the implied audience. The structuring of narratives--the
stories used to explain phenomena--is particularly important.4 I will also use broader
categories, such as the construction and evocation of cultural myth.5 Another important
concept, from literary origins, is that of tropes: clusters of meaning associated with a
phenomenon, or networks of cultural connections. Trope is a broader and more ephemeral
category than discourse. I will show how proponents of virtual reality consciously associated
VR with existing myths, positioning VR in the context of preexisting cultural tropes to
naturalize the new discourse.
I will consider the impact of social, political and economic influences using sociological
categories--notably class, power and ideology.6 Although the socioeconomics of VR is not
the central theme of this paper, the analysis would not be complete without placing VR in a
context of these broader power relations. VR is a very expensive technology, and has
emerged within institutional contexts: NASA, military researchers, video game
manufacturers, universities, software and hardware developers, and entertainment industries.
The role of ideology is significant as a backdrop to these economic developments.
The term "Virtual Reality" is particularly powerful because it can attach to a broad range of
meanings. The nature of virtual reality technology also brings up related issues about
simulation, hyperreality and "post modern" society. This paper will not directly address these
issues, though it will make apparent the significance of the emergence of this technology at
this time.

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The aim of this paper is to provide some insight into both the technology and the culture from
which it emanates. This will focus on the US, but also other Western countries and Japan. I
have selected some common themes in the rhetoric associated with Virtual Reality, and
illustrate them with examples. I will try to keep an historical basis apparent to show the
process over time by which the ideas become negotiated and accepted. The language changed
over time from the early stages, characterized by fantastic claims about the possibilities of
VR, until around 1991, when a more cautious but self-confident mode became more
common. The amount and breadth of the publicity which Virtual Reality attracted between
1989 and 1992 is evidence of the success of the ideas in finding cultural resonance.
A Brief Chronology
Virtual Reality developed from fiction in 1984 to a rich discourse and a marketed technology
by 1992. Commentators on virtual reality often observe that virtual reality seemed to emerge
independently in several places at once--that is hard to identify one origin.7 This in itself
indicates how suited to its cultural context VR was when it emerged. While there are many
precursors to today's virtual reality systems, the publicity VR has attracted is unprecedented.
By as early as 1991 the industry was established.
Virtual reality emerged from several contexts: the computer industry, the military, NASA,
science fiction, the arts, and counterculture. Science fiction has featured visions which have
been identified as precursors to virtual reality.8 The idea of "jacking in" to a dataspace
originated in William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer. This novel introduced the term
"cyberspace": the "consensual hallucination" of high-definition immersive graphical
representation of data. Technical precursors to current systems include the head-mounted
displays built by Ivan Sutherland in the late 1960s, and developed further in military and
aerospace applications, such as McDonnell Douglas's 1979 VITAL helmet. 9 From 1982
Thomas Furness II developed the Air Force's "super cockpit" virtual environment systems. In
these cases (up until 1989) these systems had limited publicity and were applied to
specialized (expensive) uses. VR also represents an extension of graphics-based computer
interfaces which have been broadly accepted in the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft
Windows.
The VIVED project was a cheaper, smaller-scale virtual environment system developed at
NASA. Michael McGreevy established the VIVED (Virtual Environment Display) project in
1985, and had created an immersive computer graphics simulation system by 1987. In
October that year Scientific American featured VIVED--a minimal system, but one which
demonstrated that a cheap immersive system was possible. It attracted some attention in
computing circles.
The commercial development of VR systems began around 1988, with VPL and Autodesk.
For the first time, they saw a mass market for immersive systems. Inspired by the NASA's
VIVED, VPL started developing a virtual reality system which combined DataGlove input
with head-mounted displays. Computer Aided Design company Autodesk started developing
cheap VR software.
1989 saw VR appear on the public agenda, and it soon had a high profile. Over the summer of
1989 Autodesk had invested an intense development effort. An article "Is it live or is it
Autodesk" was published in the Fall 1989 issue of the esoteric cyberpunk magazine Mondo
2000. Rolling Stone featured an interview with Jerry Garcia where he mentioned virtual
reality10 . In April the New York Times featured an article about virtual reality and Jaron
Lanier.11 In July, VPL and Autodesk launched their VR projects in "Virtual Reality Day,"
and they were greeted enthusiastically. Jaron Lanier was on the cover of the Wall Street
Journal with a headline comparing VR to "electronic LSD." In August VPL and Autodesk

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demonstrated their products at SIGGRAPH 89, the large annual computer graphics
conference, where was also a session on "Virtual environments and interactivity."12 The
success was quite dramatic. Many people greeted VR with excitement and enthusiasm. It
struck a cultural chord.
By 1990 the research infrastructure had broadened, and more detailed explorations of the
possibilities appeared in the media. Early in the year John Perry Barlow's in-depth article
"Being in Nothingness" appeared in Mondo 2000. This was important enough to stir the
imagination of its readership--mainly computer and cyberpunk subcultures. Bob Jacobson and
Tom Furness founded the Human Interface Technology Lab (HITL) was established at the
University of Washington. They established a conference on the academic computer network,
Internet, called "sci.virtual.worlds." Another company, Sense8, was formed as a break-away
from Autodesk's cyberpunk initiative. Mattel began mass marketing the powerglove, a cheap
VR-like video game controller developed in conjunction with VPL.
1991 saw exposure of VR to a much wider audience, particularly with Howard Rheingold's
book, Virtual Reality. By this stage twelve universities were offering VR subjects and there
were 400 systems in world (most in Japan).13 British company W Industries released the first
commercial VR entertainment system, "Virtuality" and formed a partnership with Horizon
Entertainment14 to market the VR games in the US. In May the US Senate had a hearing
about virtual reality.15
In 1992 the movie Lawnmower Man brought VR even wider exposure. The film cashed in on
(and reinforced) VR's popular profile. Regular articles appeared in magazines, and several
books had been released. 16 The Usenet newsgroup sci.virtual.worlds continued to grow. By
1992 there were 5 companies marketing complete VR systems, and 62 companies working on
related technologies.17 By this stage, promoters started making some qualifications to the
excessive claims of the early days. They were a little embarassed about the more outrageous
claims, and could not deliver anything approaching some of their wild promises. This was,
however, in itself a sign that they were starting to take themselves seriously.
Virtual reality is now widely recognized as a credible technology, and has a tangible
discourse. It has this identity even though very few people have experienced it, and in spite of
the lack of actual demonstration of the claims about its revolutionary potential. VR has gone
from being a speculative vision to being broadly perceived as almost an inevitable
development. It has attracted significant investment and research. In this essay I will try to
establish why and how. This essay will analyse some of the persistent themes associated with
VR which have helped it gain its profile.
Coming in from the margins
Military
The first fully-fledged application of head-mounted displays was in "Darth Vader" helmets
developed in the early 1980s by the US Air Force. Funding for the project came from the
enormous "Star Wars" military build-up during the Reagan presidency. Thomas Furness III
started building a prototype at the Wright-Patterson airbase in Ohio, in 1982.18 He saw that
fighter planes were becoming so complex and powerful they threatened to exceed the
capabilities of human beings to use them effectively. A fighter pilot's tasks had become so
complex and demanding new ways of controlling the flight and weapons became necessary.
The new systems they created would allow pilots to access flight data in less abstracted, more
intuitive forms. Informed by an analysis of the way humans use visual and auditory cues to
determine spatial orientation, new systems were designed to make the controls fit humans
better.19 The computers combined radar, control and weapons data into a simple graphical

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form, representing the aircraft's position, speed, underlying landscape and target in symbolic
form on the head up display. This was combined with auditory cues, also designed to
simulate 3D space.
In 1982 Furness demonstrated a working model of the Visually Coupled Airborne Systems
Simulator (VCASS). The second phase "Super Cockpit" project developed the system even
further. These developments did not attract widespread publicity, even though this research
was technically significant. While the Super Cockpit was a very high-resolution, fast virtual
display, the publicity did not compare with that which the cheaper, inferior VPL and
Autodesk versions would in 1989. The narrow and focussed purposes of the heads-up
display--to make the pilot more effective in combat situations--reflected the institution's
goals. To become a marketable technology, though, the set of possible applications would
have to be expanded, and the public profile would have to be inverted: from secrecy to
aggressive publicity.
Furness saw the possibilities for wider applications of the virtual world technologies, and, in
the late 1980s sought to develop it beyond the military realm.20 He foresaw applications in
industry, with virtual welders' masks and automotive design, in medicine, with virtual
interfaces in operating theatres, in education, with virtual libraries, and entertainment, with
interactive TV. He was excited about future possibilities: "It will be a wonderful and exciting
future--welcome to the virtual world." 21 In 1989 he became director of the Human Interface
Technology Lab at the University of Washington, which would become one of the centres of
growth in virtual reality.
The military origins of many current technologies is imprinted in their very form. The history
of investment decisions is implicit in many nonmilitary applications of computer technology.
This is most clear in the proliferation of "shoot-em-up" games and flight simulators in current
VR applications.22 Many video games involve flying jet fighters, shooting and bombing
targets. These are common not only because players like these games, but also because
weapons guidance and tracking research for military uses has filtered down into games.
Science fiction
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of
legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical
concepts...A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every
computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in
the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights,
receding...
--p. 67 Gibson (1984) Neuromancer
This quote from Neuromancer is invariably cited by VR proponents as an inspiration for the
new technology.23 Virtual reality had its origin to a great extent in the imagination of science
fiction writers and readers. The ideas of hyperspace from Star Wars, transporter beams from
Star Trek, cyberspace from Gibson, and many others were familiar fantasies. Science fiction
is often a critical and oppositional fictional form, however. The ostensibly alien setting
licences writers to discuss contemporary social issues without referring directly to what they
criticize. Sci fi often presents dystopic visions of alienation and struggle against impossible
problems. Extending the consequences of social trends can be more incisive than overt
criticism. Sci fi in its critical mode can show that things perceived as natural and normal are
in fact cultural constructs. Neuromancer was intended as social criticism, rather than
prediction. As Gibson himself says it is not really a prediction at all:
What's most important to me is that it's about the present. It's not really about an

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imagined future. It's a way of trying to come to terms with the awe and terror
inspired in me by the world in which we live.
--William Gibson, "High Tech High Life. William Gibson and Timothy Leary in
Conversation", Mondo 2000, Fall #7 (1989)
The setting of Neuromancer is a desperate criminal underworld. Huge faceless corporations
dominate an underclass. It is a hellish world where simulation is the only remaining reality.
Plastic surgery is customary--people customize their bodies for beauty and function. Designer
drugs can, for a price, provide any state of mind. The economy has become entirely
ephemeral and imaginary--a "consensual hallucination," with no connection to peoples' lives.
Technology is alienating and out of human control. The main character, Case, is a frustrated
addict of cyberspace--as punishment for stealing from his corporate employers his nervous
system has been sabotaged by neurotoxins, so he cannot "jack in." Gibson's fiction is not a
prediction of some ideal technological dystopia--it is social criticism of the processes of
alienation in contemporary society. Gibson saw massive social inequities, huge corporations,
and an economy based on ephemeral computerized network space, and extended the
tendencies into a possible future. Many fans of science fiction, though, do not read it as
criticism, or at least they put this element aside. They enjoy it for its sense of fantastic
possibilities--for the imaginative technologies it seems to predict. It is somewhat ironic that
Gibson's dystopic nightmare has become inspiration for computer scientists to create the
entity he feared (it's just like a twist in a science fiction plot, really).
Cyberspace, which embodied Gibson's fears, is now being built from his blueprint. The first
virtual environments were created at NASA in the mid 1980s. Michael McGreevy
incorporated science fiction visions into the NASA research in the mid-80s on VIVED
(Virtual Visual Environment Display). Interfaces similar to Gibson's cyberspace decks in
conception were relevant for NASA in remote manipulation and tele-presence. In 1988 John
Walker launched the Autodesk "Cyberpunk Initiative." He invoked Gibson in a white paper
called "Through the Looking Glass: Beyond User Interfaces." In it he proposed a project to
produce within sixteen months a "doorway into cyberspace." The project's motto was "Reality
Isn't Enough Any More." Walker ignored the element of social criticism in the fiction.
Randal Walser, manager of Autodesk's Cyberspace Project, directly referred to Gibson's
model of the cyberspace deck in 1991. Walser's acknowledged goal was to replicate the
fictional machine, or get as close as possible to it:
In William Gibson's stories, starting with Neuromancer, an instrument called the
'deck' is used to 'jack in' to cyberspace. The instrument that Gibson describes in
small enough to fit in a drawer, and directly stimulates to nervous system. While
Gibson's vision is beyond the reach of today's technology, it is nonetheless,
today, possible to achieve many of the effects alluded. A number of companies
and organisations are actively developing the essential elements of a cyberspace
deck...
--Walser, Randal "The emerging technology of cyberspace" in Helsel & Roth
(1991), op cit p.37
Gibson's vision of cyberspace was broken up and reassembled in a different context. Science
fiction works can be informed by a critical and imaginative edge characteristic of the fringes
of a culture. The US cultural mainstream tends to appropriate subcultural products into its
corporate organization. In the case of science fiction, what became the VR industry accepted
imaginative suggestions, while ignoring the ironic and critical context. The elements which
were excessively critical or unacceptable were stripped off, reinterpreted or ignored. The
ideas are repackaged, their critical challenges neutralized, and attached to more comfortable
discourses.

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By 1992 cyberspace had become almost inevitable--ignoring the critical nature of Gibson's
original fiction. And so Michael Benedikt in Cyberspace: First Steps (1992) comfortably
speculates "...the creation of cyberspace is not only a good, but necessary, and even inevitable
step."24 He claims cyberspace solves the information overload produced by the proliferation
of information technologies. Benedikt explores in some technical and phenomenological
detail how cyberspace could be implemented, with only a passing acknowledgment that
Gibson had not actually liked the idea of cyberspace much at all.
Counterculture
VR emerged partly as a product of a dialectic between the growth of Silicon Valley high-tech
industries and the social and political ideals of the Californian counterculture. The
counterculture, established in the 1960s around Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War
movements, has continued in various forms since. Building a new reality inside a computer is
a new form of technological utopianism. When changing social reality seems too hard, why
not create a new reality? They envisioned technologies which could be so powerful they
would force the mainstream to change its perceptions about reality.
The Cyberpunk movement appeared as a self-conscious subculture in the mid 1980s, at the
intersection of alternative culture and technology. When VR splashed onto the scene,
Cyberpunk was the centre of the ripple in the cultural pond. The term "Cyberpunk" was first
coined by Bruce Bepkie in a short story.25 It represented a merging of science fiction and
bohemia26 --high-tech comes to alternative lifestyle culture. It was socially critical, invoking
individualistic heroes rebelling against a faceless, corrupt system. It envisioned virtual reality
bringing new kinds of human understanding. Cyberpunk was important in the early stages of
the development of virtual reality. The magazine Mondo 2000 was the biggest cyberpunk
publication in the late 1980s, and became a platform for Virtual Reality. Topics included
high-tech developments, mind-expansion, science fiction, hackers, alternative music,
alternative health, drug culture and sexuality. VR was naturally very attractive to this
audience.
It also became popular in dance music culture. For example an interview with the band Deee
Lite in Mondo 2000 referred to the connection between VR and tropes of social awareness,
freedom and love. Of course there were necessary references to the 1960s and Woodstock.
DMITRY: Wigtock is...a festival of like 8000 people in Tompkins Square Park
run by the notorious drag queen Lady Bunny. It's a real celebration of freedom
and expression and individuality...with social awareness.
LADY MISS KIER: We should have a Virtual Reality program of Wigstock so
everyone can experience it...very much like drifting into cartoon land in broad
daylight. It's gorgeous. And it's basically--well, I'm not going to say it's drug free,
that's a little nave--but it doesn't rely on Ecstasy. And love is really the theme
that comes up onstage throughout the day.
"Like Tapping into the Soul of a Deep Program" Mondo 2000, Issue 3, Winter
1991
The main spokesperson for the liberating potential of virtual reality in 1989 and 1990 was
Jaron Lanier. For a while he was the most prominent promoter of VR in the press. Since
1992, though, he has disappeared from the limelight. His unconventional appearance
(dreadlocks and a beard) differentiated VR from corporate computing. In a 1990 interview in
Mondo 2000, Lanier spent half the interview diagnosing the moral and spiritual crises of
Western civilisation, what he called "Thre American stupor," and the other half praising
virtual reality:

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In Virtual Reality there's no question your reality is created by you. You made
it...I think being in that mode of realizing how active every moment in life is will
break through the stupor.
He argued "Virtual reality is the first medium to come along which doesn't narrow the human
spirit..."27 and "All you can do is be creative in Virtual Reality..." He said VR would free the
imagination of the masses, "help people to communicate" and bring a new kind of spiritual
understanding.
The faith in computers as liberators has deep roots in US and California. Virtual reality is the
battlecry of latest generation of technological advocates. In previous cases, however, dreams
of social change have not been fulfilled. Successive visionaries have envisioned technological
solutions to the political questions of social movements. By ignoring the political questions,
though, the process of implementing the ideas has often transformed their visions into
caricature. Buckminster Fuller promoted technologies which could better use and distribute
world resources. He inspired the geodesic dome at the EPCOT Centre at DisneyWorld, a
sanitized, artificial, hyperreal corporate utopia.28 Marshall McLuhan was optimistic that
"...the electronic age is literally one of illumination." In 1964 he predicted that in the
automation age teachers "may well become the only group" of employees. 29 The cuts in
education spending during the 1980s in the pursuit of high tech military technology were an
ironic inversion of McLuhan's optimism. Daniel Bell announced "post industrial society" in
1967, where technology would bring leisure for all.30 While falling employment has indeed
become a feature of society since, the fact that it has most often been involuntary is an
unfortunate twist. Stewart Brand's 1973 Computer Lib cried out for "COMPUTER POWER
TO THE PEOPLE," and foresaw computers as personal rather than corporate. The term
"personal computer revolution" has become accepted as a fair description of the growth of
computers in the 1980s. This is a term which began as metaphor has become accepted as
literal. Computers have indeed become more widespread, but the domination of the industry
by large corporations has continued. The technology has not been socially revolutionary.
A similar shift is occurring with VR and cyberpunk: the component of social criticism is
dropping away, and the enthusiasm has been transformed into entrepreneurial fervour.
Cyberpunk defines itself as marginal, esoteric, oppositional--a counterculture. As such it must
keep moving, redefining itself, shifting its identity.31 There was a tension between the
oppositional and peripheral nature of cyberpunk and the VR marketers' goals of breaking into
mainstream. While cyberpunk had energy and imagination, mainstream industry had capital.
So, for example, it wasn't until Atari marketed Jaron Lanier's hit video game, Moondust, that
Lanier had the capital to start VPL. VPL grew especially from the DataGlove contract with
NASA in 1985, the sale of complete VR systems to universities and researchers from 1989,
and the PowerGlove contract with Nintendo in 1990. In 1988 and 1989 VR was strongly
associated with the cyberpunk subculture. However, for VR to grow it needed to move away
from this marginal context. The best illustration of this process is how the association
between VR and psychotropic drugs changed as VR became more mainstream.
Drugs, dreams, metaphysics and insanity
The closest analog to Virtual Reality in my experience is psychedelic, and, in
fact, cyberspace is already crawling with delighted acid heads. The reason Jaron
resents the comparison is that it is both inflammatory (now that all drugs are evil)
and misleading. The Cyberdelic Experience isn't like tripping, but it is as
challenging to describe to the uninitiated and it does force some of the same
questions, most of them having to do with the fixity of reality itself.
--John Perry Barlow, 1990 "Being in Nothingness"

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Much of the early publicity about VR was focussed on "electronic LSD." Researchers claim
most of this came from the press rather than the researchers themselves.32 But the links
between drugs and cyberspace are explicit in Neuromancer, and drug mythology is a
significant influence in the subculture from which cyberspace emerged.33 Timothy Leary,
notorious advocate of mind-expanding drugs in the 60s, was involved with early promotions
of VR. In 1989 Autodesk used Timothy Leary in an early promotional film. Leary was
enthusiastic because he thought VR could break down the "straight" idea of a Real World or
an Absolute Reality like he had claimed LSD could, but without the stigma attached to
'drugs'.34 At this stage the discourse of VR was still marginal (or even oppositional) to the
mainstream culture. It was centred in a subculture where drug-taking was acceptable. The
links between the drug culture in the 60s and VR in the 90s was quite direct. Stewart Brand,
who had organized the San Francisco Trips festivals of 1966, organized the Cyberthon at
SIGGRAPH in 1990.35 The mainstream culture was, predictably, not receptive to the
psychedelic connotations. It was alienated by the perceived links with drugs and deviancy:
When Timothy Leary, a resurrected 1960s bogey man, gave his blessing to VR,
mainstream America and Europe shuddered. They had seen this before--the
typical self-indulgent, hedonistic, Californian drop-out scene. Virtual Reality
attracted the attentions of self-styled 'cyberpunks', and 'hackers', and suspicions
were confirmed.
--Sherman & Judkins (1992), p32
Stories appeared in the mainstream press warning of the dangers of addiction to VR
experience, and troubled by the potential psychic damage VR might cause. The actual danger
of addiction to VR had no clinical basis--the technology barely existed. The debate resulted
largely from the metaphors used to talk about the technology, and from the associations the
technology had with the Californian drug subculture. The cyberpunk enthusiasm for
"cyberdelic" experiences was echoed in inverse by the anti-drug fraternity.
When companies like VPL, Sense8 and the HIT Lab started marketing VR gear from
mid-1989, and claiming 'serious' uses, they started to try to change these perceptions about
the technology. They moved the discourse away from the subculture which originated
it--distancing it from the drug allusions:
No. No. No. Look. Virtual reality affects the outside world and not the inside
world. Virtual reality creates a new objective level of reality. You enter it in a
waking state. There's a clear transition. You can't really abuse the stuff."
Lanier, p.45, Mondo 2000, June 1990
And Bob Jacobson in 1992 was still keen to counter the perceptions about VR's association
with drugs:
Externally, we still have to deal with a popular press that is lazy, inaccurate, and
sensation-seeking, which two years after the Wall Street Journal coined the
genre, cannot resist the "electronic LSD" story. This week, our own Seattle
Times, usually the most stuck-in-the-rut paper in the Pacific Northwest, chose the
e-LSD theme to try and break out of its Sunday-morning literary straitjacket.
Only the readers didn't know how hackneyed were the writer's breathless
warnings about virtual addiction; everyone else, from writer to publisher, had
been informed. But the article ran anyway.
--Robert Jacobson, "Where In The (Virtual) World Are We? Building A Virtual
Worlds Industry" at "Virtual Reality 92," September 24, 1992
The connection with drugs was not invented by the media. It was initiated by Leary and
others, and re-interpreted by the media. To reach a mainstream market VR developers had to

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deny these associations, and move away from the counterculture from which VR had
emerged. Meanwhile, the counterculture saw the shift of the technology and became cynical
about its mass marketing, and VR lost its attraction for those who had seen it as a means of
social change. The developers had to make it palatable and attractive to the mainstream, and
demonstrate VR had serious applications such as medicine, architecture and design. It also
had to place itself and its particular significance in history.
Making History:
Edison and the Wright Brothers, Microsoft and Apple
And there was that loincloth-and-machete sense of enterprise which one might
have experienced in the Wright Brothers' Akron Bicycle Shop or Jobs' garage in
Mountain View....By June they had an implementation which, though clearly the
Kittyhawk version of the technology, endowed people with an instantaneous
vision of the Concorde level.
--Barlow, John Perry (February 1990), "Being in Nothingness"
VR is now at the Wright Brothers stage, the thing's sputtering and popping and
just barely getting off the ground-and everyone's trying to predict what
moon-rockets will be like.
--Jeremy Wolff (24 June, 1990), "Inside Virtual Reality"
In terms of VR history, putting my hands and head into Sensorama was a bit like
looking up the Wright Brothers and taking their original prototype out for a spin.
--Howard Rheingold, (1991) p.50
The Wright Brothers could not have imagined their Kittyhawk machine
developing into the stealth bomber or becoming the main shrinking agent in the
global village...
--Sherman & Judkins (1992) p.13
Just like the Wright brothers' airplanes, today's VR technology is crude compared
to what can be envisioned, but it's good enough for us to get off the ground and
into the air for an exciting experience.
--Pimentel & Texeira (1993) p.241
Emerging from margins, VR needed to demonstrate its viability as an industry, and its
potential for investors. A critical part of this process is placing the significance of the
technology in historical context. Developers began to foster a perception of VR as the early
stage of a potentially a huge industry. To do this, it compared the early incarnations of VR
technology with the early stages of other significant technological developments--retroping
historical success stories. One of the most common comparisons was flight, and the Wright
Brothers. Comparing the early stages of VR with the early models of aircraft does two
important things. First, it accounts for the problems of current models of VR, with their slow
frame rates, low resolution fuzzy graphics and slow response times. The Wright Brothers
aircraft were equally flimsy.
Second, as a narrative, it implies that a fully operational technology is inevitable. The way the
story is constructed is that these early models will be superseded, and will change the world,
just like flight. The Wright Brothers is a natural comparison, because the "Story of Flight"
always begins there, and the significance of flight is apparent. The reference to this historical
narrative implies these developments are only a matter of time.

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The claims about VR's promise appeal particularly to the American entrepreneurial spirit,
which is itself reinforced by re-telling "road-to-success" narratives, including the one about
the Wright Brothers. These stories relate the triumph of individual brilliance, persistence and
vision. They draw attention to the possibilities for exploiting a young technology at ground
level. In fact, whether VR develops or not depends on funding. How it develops will be
affected by which projects get support, and how much support. This in turn, relies on the
attitude of investors (and markets) to the technology. If these narratives are accepted both by
investors and markets, VR could become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Other technological success stories have also been used: Gutenburg and the printing press;
Edison and the light bulb; Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone; Henry Ford and the
motor car, and the phenomenal growth of companies like Apple and Microsoft.36
After the initial burst of enthusiasm about virtual reality in 1989 and 1990, the pace of the
industry slowed down. Developers tried hard to show confidence that VR would succeed. For
example, Autodesk's Randall Walser explained to a conference audience in 1992 that the
slow progress on cyberspace being broadly adopted was to be expected:
Comparing the emergence of cyberspace to the emergence of other industries, it
is clear there's nothing exceptional about a cyberspace industry, exceptional as
cyberspace itself may be. It took over ten years for the movie industry to emerge
from the time the enabling technology of filmmaking was invented...
--Randall Walser, "A de facto anti-standard for cyberspace," A speech at
Meckler Virtual Reality Conference, Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, California,
September 23-25, 1992
Virtual reality is an industry which exists because of its success in attracting investment.
Unlike the security for developers which came from the blank cheques written for military
projects, commercial research and development is precariously dependent on investors'
whims. Walser was painfully aware of this, and tried to mobilize enthusiasm of investors by
warning them of the dangers of losing opportunities. He argued cyberspace had not been
developed as quickly as had been predicted because of a lack of "will" to develop the new
kind of systems. Occassionally he lapsed into pure sales pitch:
What I'm suggesting is that cyberspace entrepreneurs have a unique opportunity,
today, to change the rules of the game in the computer industry. While I'm
skeptical of revolutionary proposals to leapfrog today's computer industry in a
near time frame...I do believe that cyberspace entrepreneurs can accelerate the
evolutionary processes that will eventually lead not just to new rules, but to a
whole new game.
-Walser, Randall, ibid
What are the implications of VR, and how do they compare with flight, the car, electrification
or the telephone as agents of social change? VR technologies (immersive navigable computer
simulations with head-mounted displays and multiple input devices) do not compare in
significance with the development of print, light bulbs or flight. VR is one part of a broader
set of computing and communications technologies which have developed in the past ten
years. VR would not have been possible if the computer operating systems and graphics,
portable displays, communications protocols and infrastructure, input and tracking devices,
had not been available. Each of these new technologies are very significant, and the
combinations they will be put into are likely to have deep social impacts. Focussing
particularly on VR is misleading, because it tends to ignore the significance of each
component of the enabling technologies. They also overplay the significance of
head-mounted displays, for example, which are too cumbersome and expensive to be likely to
have long-term, widespread appeal. Grouping all technologies under one title tends to gloss

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the strengths and limitations associated with each.
"Virtual reality," however, has become a cultural handle which attaches to a diversity of new
ideas and technologies. While it is an inaccurate and misleading term, it is widely used, and
has assumed a meaning in its own right. It has changed popular impressions of what
technology can and should do. One of the sourcs of its strength was its ability to absorb other
cultural meanings to inform its own development.
Science
The goal of VR is to fool people's senses into believing they are in the artificial
"environment," so developers naturally looked to psychology and physiology for ideas on the
way processes of perception operate. For visual "realism" various VR systems have taken into
account factors such as stereo-optical vision, accommodation, spatial and motion depth cues
and perspective.37 Virtual reality's current strength and vitality came partly from its openness
to outside influences. The process of borrowing from elsewhere was quite often troublesome,
though. The subtleties of the original fields were often lost in translation.
In a 1988 paper, "Harnessing virtual space," Thomas Furness III began with some
observations about human perception. His subheadings included: "Humans are spatial
beings," "Humans have two visual systems," and "Humans have two brains." His background
in perception helped inform the design of the new hardware and software. Unlike other
computer interface designs, which built systems to perform computational tasks, Furness
began with the user and built the hardware to suit. Interface design and information display
was a major field by the mid-1980s. In this paper for the Society for Information Display, he
set out some of the conclusions he had reached. Using biological ("The focal visual system is
mediated by the fovea of the retina...") and technical terminology ("we discern the orientation
of sound sources with an accuracy of about 1 degree in the azimuth plane and 5-10 degrees in
the medial (or frontal) plane..."), Furness implied his speculations about virtual space systems
were scientific. Somehow, though, the language does not quite fit the actual application.
While the applied systems developed in the Super cockpit may have been effective, the
connection with theoretical science is more distant than Furness would like to acknowledge.
Applied science borrows the language, and some of the conclusions of basic science, but
abandons some of its critical insight and scepticism. The observations about the nature of
human perception are oversimpified and taken out of context.
For example, he refers to the functional differentiation of the brain cortexes, and split visual
system. He fails to demonstrate the relevance of these observations, or to acknowledge the
speculative nature of these theories. The main value of scientific discourse to Furness is to
give his claims an air of authority.
Aukstakalnis and Blatner's late 1992 book Silicon Mirage opens by examining how human
senses operate, and moves on to how virtual reality should be designed to be sensitive to
these issues. The book goes into some detail describing physiological and psychological
mechanisms of human perception. It is a more mature work than Rheingold's 1991 Virtual
Reality or Glimpses of Heaven, Visions of Hell. There is a more considered analysis of many
of the more outrageous claims about the technology. It is a well researched synthesis of the
computer and biological/psychological discourses. But, like Furness's paper, it suffers from
oversimplification and a failure to connect the science with the application convincingly.
Romantic Historical Narrative
Virtual reality claimed to be both a science and an art (possibly to escape rigorous
examination as either). Proponents often identified VR with a Western tradition of

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technologies (and techniques) which represented or simulated "reality." Many introduced VR
by relating histories of the traditions of representation and art which had lead up to VR. The
claims about virtual reality are reminiscent of claims about the wide screen formats Cinerama
and Todd-AO, released in the early 1950s.38 Cinerama claimed to be the first medium which
allowed the audience to truly participate in the fictional world. Its promotions implied the
co-presence of the audience and the art: a spectacle so absorbing that "You're in the show
with Todd AO...You live it. You're a part of it" 39 Similar claims are now made about VR.
Although the perceptions about what characterizes "immersion" or "audience involvement"
have changed, the claims are quite similar. "Realism," which each time is sold as an absolute,
is a cultural construction which changes depending on the place, time and technology.
The resemblance between wide screen and VR continued in marketing techniques. In each
case the new technology was introduced by placing it in a historical framework. The
historical narrative was structured in a romantic mode, where the lines of history converge on
the technology. The history not only describes the pre-cursors to the technology in an
ascending curve, but it places the innovation as the cathartic moment: the climax of the
drama. In the case of Cinerama, the film This is Cinerama introduced the new, very
large-screen format in September 1952.40 It began with a thirteen minute narration by
newsreel commentator Lowell Thomas in black and white, standard width 35mm. He traced a
history of art from cave paintings to frescoes, to moving pictures:
Artists, photographers and motion picture cameramen...have worked since the
dawn of history to give the illusion of depth, dimension and space...to convey the
sense of living motion...
He continued to discuss the limitations imposed on artists by the frame, and the inadequacy of
previous technologies. He constructed a historical narrative which drew a line of causation
from the beginning of art inexorably toward Cinerama. Before Cinerama, artists were
frustrated by the constraints of the frame and the distance of the audience from the artwork.
Cinerama was the culmination of all previous developments, and the answer to all the
problems: at the climax of the lecture, he said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is Cinerama..."
The curtains in the cinema opened to three times their previous width and the panoramic
screen was filled with the view from the front of a rollercoaster carriage, in full colour,
accompanied with stereo sound.
Quite often Virtual Reality has been similarly been located in at the apex of a similar
historical narrative:
Throughout history, attempts have been made to capture the essence of an
experience and distil it in some form to make it available for us to enjoy and
analyse...
--Pimentel & Texeira (1993) p.19
This kind of historical narrative is so common it often evades being read as a construction.
Using the authority of so-called historic objectivity, speculation is presented as description.
By talking about developments in historical order, the writer eludes issues of scale and
context. For example, the claim that virtual reality will have major social significance is given
authority by these historical comparisons:
Just as the alphabet and the printing press changed the way people thought,
virtual reality will shape our notions of community, self, shape and time.
--Pimentel & Texeira (1993), p.240
Linear history always oversimplifies processes of causation. In each case, the history is
written in a way which privileges a central character or theme: in this case virtual reality.

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History as a cultural text is not neutral. Metaphor influences the meanings associated with the
history, but the text does not acknowledge that it is in fact a construction.
There are many historical metaphors used to which VR has been compared. Some other
common examples include social Darwinism ("The Evolution of Cyberspace,"41 ); childbirth
("Still, everyone realized that a baby this size would be bound to occasion some labor
pains,"42 ); space exploration "Blastoff at NASA,"43 ); palontology ("stone age"); and "The
tip of the iceberg." ("The first step on a long journey. The infancy of the technology,"44 As
Aukstakalnis and Blatner comment: "There's almost no way to circumvent using a cliché to
describe where we are right now in relation to the future of virtual reality."45 The following
sections will examine in detail another common metaphor: the frontier.
Not every narrative fulfils its implied structure. Another example of historical narrative abour
VR, which broke slightly from the traditional form, is Barlow's "Being in Nothingess" which
traces a history of symbolic communications from when "the Sumerians started poking sticks
into clay and claiming that the resulting cuneiform squiggles meant something..." The history
continues through the Greek and Egyptians and to Don Quixote. From Cervantes "any
experience could be plucked from its holy moment in time and pressed like a flower in a
book, to be reconstituted in the imagination of the reader." But, Barlow said, the inadequacy
of the descriptive power of words and symbols is frustrating. The twentieth century has also
seen the formation of a huge "DataCloud," says Barlow--an unending stream of meaningless
statistical information which defies analysis from its sheer quantity. Interestingly, Barlow's
narrative stops short of the expected conclusion (that VR would be the solution to these
frustrations). He modestly asserts: "Virtual Reality is probably not going to cure this nonsense
any more than television...has done...If it won't contain the DataCloud, it might at least
provide some navigational aids through it."
The historical narrative was useful for proponents of virtual reality. It communicated a sense
of scale and importance, and created an aura of intellectual authority. It posed historical
problems which proponents duly showed that VR could solve. It projected a future of VR as a
natural extension of the historical process which they described. The history was an important
foundation, but it remained crucial that the discourse move into more tangible applications,
and colonize the mainstream.
Cyberspace and the Frontier Myth:
Columbus, the Frontier and Neil Armstrong
In 1989 VPL laid claim to the "new continent" of virtual reality. The "new frontier" analogy is
a reference to the history of discovery and colonization of the United States. It conjures
images of strong, independent men forging frontiers into a heroic wilderness with the promise
of unlimited prosperity and freedom. The analogy to colonization is quite pertinent.
The idea that VR researchers were "pioneers," involved in "colonization" appeared quite
often, particularly in the year after VR's first public appearance. It was not only because VR
was new that made this analogy popular: it was the nature of the technology of cyberspace.
The head-mounted binoptical display is designed to provide an experience of 3D space, and
the experience of immersion and navigation create another new kind of space to explore--a
new frontier.
Cyberpunk magazine Mondo 2000 headed its Summer 1990 edition "The Rush Is On!
colonizing Cyberspace." The major article, by John Perry Barlow, "Being In Nothingness," is
subtitled "Virtual Reality and the pioneers of cyberspace." Barlow describes VPL as "the
other trading post on VR frontier..."(p37) The article is rich with cultural allusions. Barlow

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makes a direct comparison to historical events:
'I think this is the biggest thing since we landed on the Moon,' says Jaron Lanier,
the dreadlocked CEO of VPL Research. (Who was 9 years old in 1969). I don't
choke on that one. Indeed, I'd take it a bit farther, guessing that Columbus was
probably the last person to behold so much useable and unclaimed real estate (or
unreal estate) as these cybernauts have discovered.
--John Perry Barlow, (1990) "Being in Nothingness," p.37
Researchers claimed a moral responsibility to fulfil an historic destiny, comparing themselves
with historical precedents, like the original White colonizers of North America:
As pioneers, we are obligated to pursue the development of virtual interface
technologies in a systematic way and leave a technology base and tools as a
legacy for others to build upon.
--Thomas A Furness III, "Creating better virtual worlds"
The theme of the frontier is familiar to Americans. The idea can be traced largely to historian
Frederick Jackson Turner, who in 1893 argued that the American character was formed by the
process of struggle on a series of frontiers.46
A central component of the frontier myth is the importance of space. Turner's history gave
primacy to geography as a formative forces on the American people.47 "The factor of time in
American history is insignificant when compared with the factors of space and social
evolution..."48 The frontier thesis captured the imagination of many historians of the day.
Since then the idea has been absorbed into popular mythology. For Turner and many since,
the 19th century Western frontier represented freedom to move and opportunity to grow and
prosper. Writing in the 1890s, just after the frontier was deemed closed, he feared this end of
the frontier would be an end to American prosperity and opportunity. This implied a need to
find further frontiers to maintain the nation's strength and vitality. The frontier has been used
since as a metaphor for freedom and progress, and has been applied to many phenomena.
Space exploration, especially, in the 1950s and 1960s was often called "the new frontier."
The idea of virtual reality as a cyberspace establishes its continuity with these previous
frontiers. The comparison associates the new technology with freedom, opportunity, progress
and individualism. VR and cyberspace find particular resonance within US culture because of
its spatiality. Text-based hypermedia cannot claim the same. VR researchers were conscious
of the significance of this, and emphasized it:
A property common to all virtual worlds, however, is their spatiality. Information
within these worlds is presented in three (or more) dimensions.
--Robert Jacobson, 1991, "Bringing virtual worlds to the real world: toward a
global initiative" from sci.virtual.worlds
Barlow extended the frontier metaphor,
...the presence of such unclaimed vastness seems to elicit territorial impulses
from psychic regions too old to recognize the true infinity of this new frontier.
Disputes appeared like toadstools in the rich new soil of cyberspace.
--John Perry Barlow, "Being in Nothingness"
There is no boundary to separate accurate description of the nature and function of the
technology from potentially distorting allusions to cultural myths. New ideas have to be
introduced with old language. Therefore metaphor needs to be used. While this brings a
semiotic power to help communicate complex ideas, it inevitably transmits a broad range of

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meanings over which the speaker has less control. The VR interface certainly may be very
useful for manipulating 3-D objects in a way that is more "intuitive" than keyboard
commands or a mouse. It may also allow interaction with a more natural seeming experience
through its graphical representation of space. However, it remains essentially a computer with
its attached peripheral devices, and not a real metaphysical or ontological challenge.
What tended to happen, though, were claims that what had been metaphor had become literal
truth. Rather than saying VR was like a new reality, developers started claiming it was
actually another reality. Jaron Lanier argued VR went beyond being a medium: "It's not even
a medium,. It's a new reality."49
The computer is a map you can inhabit...Virtual reality is a new landscape, not a
new map. That's what makes it completely different from computers.
--Jaron Lanier (1990), "Life in the DataCloud," Mondo 2000, p.49
It seems clear that "virtual reality" is not simply a metaphor for this new
environment, but a legitimate description.
--Meredith Bricken (1989), "Inventing Reality" p.8, HITL paper, HITL-M-89-2.
Claiming authenticity for the metaphor is an important way of making the technology appear
natural and relevant. By appealing to the US cultural imagination's attraction to space, and
perceived opportunity, they attracted attention to the technology. Once the connection had
been made, VR proponents tried to reposition the tropes (reality, space) from a relationship of
metaphor to synonymity.
Another cultural undercurrent VR taps is the value placed on direct experience versus
abstraction. This prejudice can also be traced to the frontier myth: Turner argued that the
American character became different from Europeans through the process of forging the
frontier. The characteristics of the frontiersman were: "coarseness and strength combined
with acuteness and inquisitiveness...that masterful grasp of material things...these are the
traits of the frontier."50 Turner identified, and thereby reinforced, a tendency in US culture to
value direct experience over "book-learnin'" and action over contemplation. This is a cultural
value, not a feature of human nature. Popular heroes from Daniel Boone to Rambo have
embodied these attributes and reinforced the stereotype.
A central tenet of VR is that is experiential. Unlike other types of computing, which require
symbolic abstraction, VR allows dealing with computers to be a direct experience--therefore
something familiar and attractive.
Because the participant is both physically and perceptually involved with the
environment, the process co-ordinates the cognitive, the psycho-motor, and the
affective domains of experience. The importance of experiential learning has
been acknowledged for over one hundred years.
--Meredith Bricken, "A description of the virtual reality learning environment"
Randall Walser from Autodesk was another who emphasized the experiential nature of VR,
for example in a 1990 paper "Elements of a cyberspace playhouse." His choice of the
"playhouse" analogy in itself emphasized the physical nature of this kind of interaction with a
computer. The playhouse was Walser's somewhat far-fetched vision of a shared
computer-generated space to play games and interact with others. He argued that virtual
reality emerged at this time because of what he said was the recent breakdown of the dualistic
division between mind and body. He referred to Mark Johnson's book The Body in the Mind,
which, Walser said, challenged the Western separation of abstract thought from physical
experience:

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The new perspective on human/computer interaction is due in part to recent
advances in computer graphics and simulation, and in part to reductions in the
cost of key user interface technologies. The new perspective was precipitated,
though, by the growing realization in the scientific community that the basis of
rationality is not in the world, as had been supposed, but in the human body.
--Randall Walser, "A Cyberspace Playhouse", Proceedings of National
Computer Graphics Association, Annaheim, March 19-22, 1990
The new paradigm, he said, placed a central role of the human body in human thought and
self-perception, rather than ideals of rationality and Platonic truths. The means by which we
come to understand the world--our senses and our body--are critical to the nature of this
understanding. What do you know, it's just like VR! Walser borrowed intellectual credibility
by claiming the new technology was "precipitated" by developments in the "scientific
community," rather than in the imagination of Californian cyberspace entrepreneurs. He was
quite imaginative in claiming that completely unconnected intellectual work demonstrated the
necessity for his inventions. The link between the two developments are pretty tenuous, but
did serve Walser's purpose.
VR transcended two of the most serious limitations of interacting with a computer
simulation: the lack of a sense of space, and the distance from direct experience, by claiming
their technology could create a new form of space and a new kind of experience. The
language of Lanier, Walser, Gullichsen and Rheingold fostered the perception that VR can
provide direct experience rather than encoded or mediated knowledge. They conjure up a new
kind of computer pioneer-hero. The metaphors "exploration," "interaction" and "immersion,"
central to virtual reality, emphasize engagement, involvement, control and action. While not
literally true (these activities are all contained within the computerized virtual (metaphorical)
world), the terms denote activities which are literal and direct. This paradoxical quality of
virtuality: being neither entirely literal nor metaphorical, gives the term its power. Computers
cannot make space or provide a synthesized experience identical with direct experience. Until
VR, computers were not associated with direct engagement, because they were conceived of
computers as tools. VR confronted the limitations of computers by facing them head-on.
Colonizing the Mainstream:
VR and Other Discourses
The term "colonization" is appropriate to virtual reality another way: the colonization of other
discourses. To construct their discourse, virtual reality proponents had to establish a shared
terminology and set of assumptions. They did this by incorporating and adapting the language
of other discourses. Michel Foucault used the term colonization to mean the coming to
dominance of certain ways of viewing the world, and this has clearly happened with virtual
reality.51 VR is a computer-based technology, but as a discourse it has attempted to colonize
a range of older, traditionally non-computer-based discourses: among them design, art,
entertainment, communications and even philosophy. It claims to have an "enabling
technology" which can do old things better. This process involves re-troping (changing the
meanings associated with) both the technology and the traditional discourses. To do this, VR
proponents had to attempt to change the perceptions people had about computers, and about
other discourses with which computers had not previously been associated. Over time, there
have been shifts in who is talking about VR, and in what terms. In the early stages it was
mainly the cyberpunk subculture and computer people introduced the idea. Journalists
(notably Barlow and Rheingold) helped bring attention to the technology. Researchers in
other fields, such as architecture, the arts, entertainment and even philosophy have also taken
up the discourse.

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Databases, Weapons Delivery, and Nuclear Physics
The meanings associated with computers have changed significantly over time. The early
computers were built in the 1950s in large institutions--the military, universities, and
corporations. They were very expensive and inaccessible. Consequently, the work they were
used to perform tended to be related to specific objectives such as calculating weapons
trajectories, physics equations, or keeping track of data collections. For example, nuclear
physicists relied on computer power to track the complex equations needed for nuclear power
plants or weapons. Therefore until the late 1970s computers tended to be associated with
these monolithic, purposive applications. The discourse of computing was highly technical,
closed and specialized. The general public were often mystified by computers, and sometimes
feared them.52 Some utopian futurists, as discussed earlier, foresaw utopian possibilities of
computers and automation leading to a leisured, post-industrial society.53
One of the biggest popular influences on perceptions about computers was media theorist
Marshall McLuhan.54 His broadening of the definition of a medium, and his technological
utopian vision of the global village were the major contributions which have influenced
computer developers. Researchers cite McLuhan as someone who changed their idea about
computers: "The computer is a medium! I had always thought of it as a tool."55 Computers
are now commonly considered media.
The personal computer "revolution" fulfilled McLuhan's prophesies. It changed computers
from specialized, enormous machines in institutions, to multifunctional, accessible, portable
equipment. From the Altair, Sinclair and the Apple released in the mid-70s, to the IBM PC
and Apple's Macintosh in the early 80s, computers moved into people's everyday lives.56
Computers in the West are now on office desks, and in many homes. This has changed the
cultural values associated with the computer. For example, the BBC TV documentary The
Thinking Machine compared the history of computers with the history of the book. They
pointed out books were once the property of an elite few (manuscripts in monasteries), but
with the printing press books became cheaper and universally accessible. The choice of this
analogy of the book in itself demonstrates the shift of meanings and tropes around computers.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s the pace of development, the breadth of adoption of
computer systems, and the growth of companies was so dramatic that computer industry had
enormous self confidence. In this atmosphere it seemed anything could be possible.
In his original 1988 Autodesk white paper, "Through the looking glass," John Walker placed
VR as the natural conclusion of the progression in human-computer interaction. His historical
narrative described the way people interacted with their computers. The story began with
batch cards, then to VDU screens, menus, icons, and finally to VR. At every step in this
history a new barrier was breached. This narrative is constructed with the intention of
showing that VR is the inevitable and logical conclusion to a historical process. The drama is
based on the central character, the ideal computer user. This user has to overcome a series of
barriers to find perfect interaction with the computer. Over the time from the first computers,
the user returns several times in a mythical challenge, but with each step, a new barrier
appears: the countertop, the terminal, the menu hierarchy. Finally, in the cathartic moment,
the ideal user, equipped with virtual reality, transcends the final barrier of the screen. He lives
happily ever after at one with the computer.
The biggest success of computers outside business has been games, from "Pong" and "Space
Invaders," and increasing in sophistication and power since. These have been popular,
especially with teenage boys, but have never been broadly accepted in the same way film or
television have. They tend to be perceived by many as a frivolous waste of time, rather than
respectable entertainment. The huge success of Sega and Nintendo home entertainment
systems have provided hard economic evidence of the saleability of computer entertainment,

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and in fact, the videogames industry has been a major contributor to virtual reality research.57
It is in this context of changing meaning of the computer which VR emerged. VR stretched
the tropes around computing some notches further than even the most self-confident software
developer or games designer. VR researchers were aware they needed to extend the
perceptions about computers. They claimed VR was a paradigm shift in computing:
Any technology which has the audacity to call itself a variety of reality must also
propose a paradigm shift. In essence, a paradigm shift expands the potential of an
entire discipline...Computers are not just symbol processors, they are reality
generators.
--William Bricken (1990) "Virtual Reality. As unreal as it gets"
Video games technology has been re-badged with a new and more fashionable tag: virtual
reality. The term has become so loosely used that it is often applied to almost any interactive
graphics system. The technical differences between VR and video games technologies are
quite small, but proponents of serious VR have tried hard to distinguish their systems from
the games. They called themselves "scientists"58 , and emphasized the practical relevance of
their applications. This was a significant shift, but in language and paradigm more than in the
actual technology: they claimed VR could be a gateway into another reality. Jaron Lanier
from VPL was quite aware of the nature of the task: "Remember we're doing cultural alchemy
here. We're introducing a new talisman into Western Civilization."59 McLuhan was referred
to regularly by Lanier60, Bricken61, Benedikt62, Randal Walser63, and Rheingold.
Researchers knew they needed to position their newly formed discourse into fields perceived
as socially valuable so VR could absorb the credibility by association. Constructing the
historical context was important, but VR needed to find itself a way into other disciplines by
demonstrating its relevance in practice. Some of the common directions they headed toward
were entertainment, communications, design and medicine.
Hollywood, TV and Disneyland
It's Disneyland for epistemologists.
--Barlow, Being in nothingness (op cit)
My idea of virtual reality is that, in the long run, it's going to shut down
television.
--Jaron Lanier, "Life in the DataCloud," Mondo 2000 #2, Summer 1990, p.44-54
It's truly a quantum leap in entertainment technology and has been hailed as the
greatest advance in leisure since the invention of moving pictures.
--W Industries CEO Jon Waldern, Press release, Orlando, Florida, 12th
November, 1991
When VR moved in the direction of entertainment it found fertile ground to colonize. To
succeed it had to establish why it was superior to existing technologies, and that it was
relevant and credible in this context. The major claim VR made was its interactivity. VR can
create a world to explore, and viewers become participants-they become artists. In practice
this is yet to be proven convincingly. By building the historical narratives, as was discussed
earlier, VR aimed to make associations with much broader range of cultural traditions than
previous computer-based systems.
Many computer developers looked outside their discourse for inspiration.
Theodor Nelson had been claiming since the early 1980s that computing was a branch of

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film-making.64 In 1991 Brenda Laurel, a software designer with a background in theatre,
released Computers as Theatre, comparing the tasks for interface design with Aristotelian
dramatical principles. Virtual reality was often compared with Alice in Wonderland, and
Alice Through the Looking Glass. It was compared with Cinerama and film.
Virtual reality has been reasonably successful in having its claims to being the "next big
thing" accepted. It has found some institutional support from other areas. The entertainments
industries (especially video games and film) have become involved. The Powerglove, VPL's
cheaper version of their Dataglove, was marketed by Mattell as part of video games systems
from late 1989 until 1991. Video games manufacturers Sega and Nintendo have VR research
projects underway, though costs are too high for mass marketing complete systems yet.65
George Lucas, who made the hugely successful Star Wars movies, invested much of the
money into developing broader entertainment systems. In 1985 the Lucasfilm Games division
started developing "Habitat," a prototype networked virtual multi-user environment for the
Commodore 64 computer.66 LucasArts' special effects division, Industrial Light and Magic,
spawned Rebel Arts & Technology, now a significant researcher in the VR field. They have
used the infrastructure and funds developed in film making, and from the amusement ride,
SpaceRace. They have also been funded by the military-the commando pod project with
Hughes Aerospace. They are currently developing multi-user virtual reality games systems
that may be networked across the US, and even the world. 67
In 1992 VPL and MCA Ltd (the parent company of Universal) were developing VR
experiences called "Voomies,"68 associating the experience with film in name, implying in
fact that it is even better. They intend to build interactive virtual reality theatres, possibly in
Universal Studios in Los Angeles.
The W Industries "Virtuality" system, developed in Britain, is the only successfully broadly
marketed consumer-oriented system. The company was founded in Leicester in October 1987
by John Waldern and others with backgrounds in graphics and flight simulation, including
Marconi Radar Systems Ltd. In developing VR they succeeded in getting funding from a wide
range of sponsors in entertainment related fields. In 1989 they were 75% bought out by a
leisure industry company. Before that company went bankrupt, W Industries, had been bought
by the company that owned Wembley stadium, maintaining the links to entertainment. In
November 1990 they released a stand up virtual reality system, and a sit-down version the
following March.69 In November 1991 Horizon Entertainments, a division of the Edison
Brothers Store retail chain, began distributing W Industries' Virtuality system throughout the
US. The sites where it was installed in 1992 included the UC Student Union at Berkeley,
California, the Forest Fair Mall in Cincinnati, Ohio, casinos in Las Vegas, the Universal
Studios Tour in Los Angeles, and the Cineplex Odeon/Chelsea Theatre in New York City.70
These systems hardly delivered on the promise of creativity and exploration, though. The
games include a driving game, flying a Harrier jump jet, and a game where two players try to
shoot each other while dodging pterodactyls flying overhead. New social phenomena emerge
in familiar environments and institutions, and take familiar forms.
Other media capitalized on the attention VR had attracted. Virtual reality appeared in
children's books, dance parties in England,71 many TV and print news stories, magazine
articles, TV games shows,72 and documentaries. The film Lawnmover Man, based on a
Stephen King story which had nothing to do with VR, took up the theme in 1992. The film
featured impressive computer graphics, and an absurd plot about an obsessed scientist
artificially increasing the brainpower of the village idiot. This film further expanded the
profile of VR technology. In May 1993 another TV program featuring virtual reality as a
central theme, Wild Palms, screened on American television. The process was
circular-publicity attracted more publicity. It didn't always do much to help people understand

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the technology, but this was irrelevant to the box office.
Medicine, Science, Architecture
Further than entertainment, though, VR aimed from early on to be accepted as viable for a
range of more serious applications. VR's claims that it would be of major significance needed
to be backed up with actual examples of working systems. These examples had to be suited
uniquely to VR's strengths, and demonstrably superior to other applications. They had to be
of enough value to justify their cost. It was crucial that the applications be outside the current
discourse of computing.
VR researchers understood that successful colonization of the discourses of science and
architecture could bring huge rewards. The University of North Carolina have been
particularly active in trying to demonstrate practical uses of VR. Two projects suited these
needs well: the design of Sittersen Hall, and molecular docking, with force feedback. These
demonstrated the viability of VR systems outside their discourse. Sittersen Hall, the new
computing science building, was being built on UNC campus. The computing department
whose building it would be, decided to apply VR systems to that process, and built a virtual
version of the building as a demonstration. Much is made of the fact that a planned partition
was moved once it became clear in virtual space that the area would feel too confined. This
served as a demonstration of the viability of VR in architecture.
The molecular force feedback system presents graphical representations of molecules. The
user can manipulate the molecules on the screen by moving a robot arm. The arm reacts to the
pressure applied by the user in accordance with the way the molecules attract and repel one
another. It is therefore possible to design new molecules in a more intuitive way. This
application was designed to demonstrate the usefulness of VR in theoretical science. It
positioned VR in a new discourses outside the field of computing (and video games). Medical
imaging, which has along history from the X-ray to the CAT scan, could benefit from a 3D
intuitive interface. VR as an industry could benefit from the research funds medicine attracts,
and has set its sights on that. Applications for disabled people have also been considered.
Other claims, like Lanier's argument that VR could help minimize pollution by having people
work from home rather than commute73 is a bit less credible.
This colonization has been quite productive. Many university researchers have bought VR
systems. By mid 1991, besides the early adopters at the U of W and UNC, the University of
Central Florida, the University of Alberta, Syracuse University, the University of Virginia,
and MIT all had VR research projects underway.74 Around the same time the U of W's
Human Interface Technology Lab had gathered support from many companies in a
consortium including Alias Research; The Boeing Company; Digital Equipment Corporation;
Franz, Inc.; the Port of Seattle; Sun Microsystems; US West Communications; VPL
Research; Microsoft; Fujitsu; Insight; and Matsushita Electronics. While most publications
about VR are still written by computer people, or journalists, increasingly other groups are
being involved. Among the more notable is Cyberspace, First Steps (1992), which is edited
by Michael Benedikt, an architect. The book also includes chapters by another architect, a
philosopher, a sociologist, and an anthropologist, as well as a number of computer people.
Several companies are applying VR to specific problems. Boeing use it in aircraft design and
simulation. Japanese household appliance company, Matsushita, use VR to help customers
design their own kitchen. UCLA architects and urban planners used VR as a tool in the
rebuilding of LA after the riots of April 1992.75
Digital Colonization of the Analog Dataspace

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Another process of colonization associated with cyberspace is what I call the digital
colonization of the analogue dataspace. By envisioning a world where all information is
infinitely accessible irrespective of place, the implication is that absolutely everything can
and should be represented in digital form. The technologically built global village, newly
incarnated as cyberspace, implies a potential that VR could be a new space for liberation and
universal understanding, with access to all wisdom and truth anywhere at any instant:
"Inclusion and unconstrained realities."76
Undoubtably one new factor which has contributed to the growth of VR is the Internet, which
developed in parallel with VR. Internet is the international academic packet-switched network
which started as ARPANet in California in the early 1980s. It has grown to include literally
millions of on line users at universities, and companies around the world. The Human
Interface Technology Lab started the news group sci.virtual.worlds in 1989. Anyone
connected to internet can, with appropriate software, read and send "postings" to this news
group. Many more people read articles than send them. This provided a forum for discussion
about VR and surrounding issues for many developers from around the world. It clearly lead
to quicker development of the discourse than otherwise would have been possible. The
postings keep all readers of the group in touch with broad developments in the field much
more quickly than any other form of publication. It allowed for cross-fertilisation of ideas
from around the world. It quickly propagated agreement on terminology. It also filtered
unacceptable ideas. The notorious practice of "flaming" on internet soon sets straight people
who deviate from the agreed line. "Flaming" is a term used to describe tirades of opinion
which some users send in response to opinions with which they disagree. Much of the
research for this essay was done through the sci.virtual.worlds newsgroup and its archives.
The newsgroup in itself powerfully demonstrated the power of using information which is
accessble through the global network. However, there are limitations to what is possible
though internet, and necessary political issues which can easily be ignored.
The dream of all information being universally accessible compels its converts to undertake a
never-ending quest to record everything in a digital and network-accessible form. The
inspiration can be seen, for example, in Project Gutenburg, an internet site which has
digitized several works of literature deemed to be significant. The database can be searched
from anywhere on the Internet. Users input specific words or phrases, and a full text quotation
of any text in which the search criteria appear will be returned. There are many similar
on-line databases, such as "Dialog" and "Compuserve," which value themselves for their
comprehensiveness. Many charge fees for the search. The claim to comprehensiveness is
quite misleading. Anything which is not entered is rendered non existent. The cost of building
and maintaining the databases effectively censors unfashionable ideas-they never get put onto
the databases. The process of electronic marginalisation is difficult to document, but it is
magnified by the impression some may have that information available through these kinds of
database is comprehensive.
While it is possible to represent text, sounds, still and motion graphics and 3D modelled
objects digitally, not all knowledge or all experience can fit this form. Meanings change with
context, and digitisation tends to remove information from its context. Standardisation of the
manner in which information is presented will impose a culturally loaded form on what really
are diverse data. Its consistent form (whether that is ASCII text, graphics, or a fully graphical
matrix) imposes a homogeneity of form which implies similarities where there are none.
Types of knowledge which cannot be codified and digitized will become invisible in virtual
space. Directory structures, field definitions and graphical representations inevitably impose
meanings on all the information that is available.
The terms "frontier" and "colonization," used uncritically by VR proponents, are not
universally accepted as favourable. Tropes are often ambiguous and may be contested and

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re-interpreted. One people's heroic advance of progress is another's invasion and genocide.
The advance of the western frontier involved the annihilation and disenfranchisement of
native American communities. Colonialism and its heroic connotations have been challenged
recently, particularly by the ancestors of ignored people who were the unacknowledged
victims of colonialism. Of course virtual reality will not mean trampling on pre-existing
territories. However, there is a danger that this virtual space will alienate minority
perspectives in a similar way: not from direct policy, but by the economics and practice of
access to the technology. From under a head-mounted display it is easy to ignore the people
outside the cyberspace: excluded by economics, language and subculture. The level of
diversity of opinion and perspectives within cyberspace is a product of who has access.
Social class is an equally potent division in virtual reality as it is in social reality. In spite of
the claims that everyone is the same in virtual worlds, access to technology and necessary
skills will effectively replicate class divisions of the rest of reality in the virtual spaces. The
socially underprivileged will be excluded not by evil tyrants, but by the invisible hand of
economics.
Language barriers are not transcended by cyberspace. Non-English speakers are effectively
excluded from much of the activity on global networks because English is so predominant.
The arguments that the graphical nature of virtual reality, and the emergence of real time
translation will overcome language barriers are making nave assumptions about the power of
the technologies. Language will always be a divider, to the benefit of dominant languages.
Already on the international academic network, Internet, it is evident there is a dominance of
users from the US. Needless to say, it is only available to those with access to computers, and
who know how to use the,. If this is an alternative reality, a crucial issue is who creates that
reality. This means not only access to the information within cyberspace, but access to
inputting and changing that information. The world views contained within cyberspace will
be a consequence of who gets to down-load the information there. Therefore the diversity of
people who have access is crucial. These considerations should temper some of the utopian
rhetoric about cyberspace's liberating potential.
Virtual reality can be an extension of a tendency in western capitalist societies to commodify
human experience. The World Travel and Tourism Council claimed tourism is the world's
biggest industry, generating 5.5% of the world's GDP.77 The sex industry sells quick and
convenient sexual experiences.78 Drug industries essentially market the experience of
intoxication (the Budweiser beer company have sponsored virtual reality demonstrations). In
each case experience is demarcated, prepared and sold as a commodity. Package tours, tourist
complexes and amusement parks pre-package experience-they transform serendipity to
certainty, maximising tourists' satisfaction and minimising their inconveniences. Skiing,
parachuting, bungie jumping, hang gliding, paraflying and joy flights are highly commodified
extraordinary experiences, designed to allow the customers to transcend their prosaic
everyday lives. The nature of the experience should reliably be as engaging and exciting as
possible. Like other commodities, though, rarity increases value--so achieving some form of
monopoly is attractive. Virtual reality (as a concept, rather than current application) promises
to be a commodity absolutely controllable and saleable. It will efficiently give only the
experiences intended, with few side effects (which may result in expensive litigation). And
because it is accessible only through expensive (proprietary) hardware it can be charged for
by the minute.
These criticisms do not say that the technology will be catastrophic or particularly regressive
in itself. VR's social consequences will not be an exception to other social patterns. It has
been sold as though it were exceptional--spiritually enlightening, socially liberating, and
qualitatively different to other technologies. It is neither a panacea nor a calamity. It will tend

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to reinforce existing inequalities, and propagate already dominant ideologies. Diversity of
ownership and access are the base political issues relating to these technologies, but these
tend often to be passed over. It is always assumed there will be technical solutions just around
the corner.
Conclusion
Virtual reality's recent emergence as a discourse shows that the process of a technology
coming to acceptance involves more than just creating better hardware and software. VR
originated as a marginal technology associated, on the one hand, with the military, and, on the
other, with science fiction and the cyberpunk counterculture. It was taken up by computer
companies as a product-but in the process of its development and promotion it changed to
better suit mainstream values.
VR's appeal has largely been due to its marketing. It proposed a paradigm shift: that
computers can be "reality generators," not just symbol processors. This shift allowed VR to
become associated with a far broader range of cultural tropes than computers had been before.
The VR fraternity gave their technology a history, writing narratives which fitted VR at the
apex of the historical process. To give a sense of cultural scale, they compared their
technology with others, such as flight, the telephone and the printing press. By emphasising
the spatial and experiential nature of VR, proponents tapped into US cultural traditions-which
I have related to the myth of the frontier. Meanwhile they tried to broaden the range of areas
to which the technology could be understood to apply--colonizing discourses. It has also
enriched itself by being informed by other discourses. The excessive claims about VR seen
around 1989 have been tempered, and VR now has a solid infrastructure of developers, and a
receptive public. This success can partly be attributed to the technology itself, but as this
essay has shown, the process is more complex and is strongly connected with the cultural
context into which the technology was introduced.
Cultronix--volume 1, number 1