Lighting a Path While Immersed in Presence: A Wayward Introduction

Abstract

The sense of presence in simulated environments, be it fragile and fleeting or sometimes deep and traumatizing, is the construct used to describe, measure, and sometimes evaluate and design and optimize systems that provide that ability. We spend more and more time in simulated realities provided by the systems that occupy our walls as screens or projections, fill our hands with messages from other places, or increasingly attach to our bodies and senses augmenting our physical reality with virtual objects, places, and beings.

Within the work on presence there is an interdisciplinary community of researchers, who bring different theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of presence. The community of presence researchers include: psychology, philosophy, medicine, engineering, communication, and various other areas.

This book represents some of the work from experienced researchers on presence with a weight on definitional and psychological issues and less on the engineering and technical aspects of specific interfaces.

Author Note

This material is based upon work supported by the Newhouse Endowment. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Newhouse Foundation. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Frank Biocca, Media Interface and Network Design (M.I.N.D.) Labs, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. Electronic mail address: fbiocca@syr. edu.