Real Space: The Fate of Physical Presence in the Digital Age, on and Off Planet

Description

Cyberspace takes us to any part of the planet we want to visit. But as Paul Levinson shows in his brilliant new book, when it comes to essential aspects of life we prefer to take our bodies with us. Whether it's trains, planes, scooters of pogo sticks, we want to really move through our world. Is planet earth the end of the line, or is space itself the next stop? In a lucid inquiry that ranges from robots to religion, Paul Levinson asks why there is a deep-seated human desire to know what's 'out there'. Full of fascinating examples, Realspace asks some searching questions about space and the way we think about it. Why, after getting a man on the moon, did the US space program develop so slowly? In a world where space is constantly repackaged, how do we know what real space is? Is our desire to get into space natural, spiritual or military? And why do we call rocks on Mars names such as Yogi and Barnacle Bill? A tour de force of fascinating thinking about our future, Realspace is essential reading for anyone sitting in front of a computer screen in cyberspace, thinking of boarding a space shuttle, or just hurtling with humanity on spaceship Earth.

Paul Levinson's The Soft Edge (1997) and Digital McLuhan (1999) have been the subject of major articles in The New York Times and Wired and have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and six other languages. Digital McLuhan won the Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship, and Levinson's science fiction novel The Silk Code won the 2000 Locus Award for Best First Novel. Additional science fiction novels include Borrowed Tides (2001) and The Consciousness Plague (2002). He has appeared on 'Inside Edition', CNN, The History Channel, CSPAN, Fox News, NPR, the BBC, and the CBC. He was President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, 1998-2001, and is Professor and Chair of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City.

'...A lucid argument for injecting new passion into the exploration of outer space... He is one of our very best writers on technology because he presents the big picture.' - Michael Heim, author of The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality