technological developments. The consequences of a weakening of the sense of reality based upon the physical world are also considered.

Virtual Reality, or VR, is a concept that was first formally proposed in the early Seventies by Ted Nelson ComputerDreams. The basic idea is that human beings should design machines that can be operated in a manner that is as natural as possible, for th

For instance, the standard QWERTY keyboard is a moderately good instrument for

entering exactly the letters which have been chosen to make up a word and hence to construct sentences. Human communication, however, is often most fluent in speech, and so a computer that could understand spoken words (preferably of all languages) and

splay them in a standard format such as printed characters, would be far easier to use, especially since the skills of speech exist from an early age, but typing has to be learnt, often painfull

that we can see than to specify it by name. All of these ideas had to wait until the technology had advanced sufficiently to permit their implementation in an efficient manner, that is, both fast enough not to irritate the user and cheap enough for mas

As implied above, the uses of Virtual Reality can be understood in two ways. Firstly, VR can be viewed as a more effective way of communicating concepts, abstract or concrete, to other people. For example, as a teaching tool, a VR interface to a databas

However, this hypothesis fails to include the pleasurable parts of escapist thinking, which may either be recalling past experiences or, more importantly for this study, the sense of security and safety that can exist within situations that exist only i

Escapism can be rather loosely defined as the desire to be in a more pleasant mental and physical state than the present one. One line of thought would suggest that all conscious thought is a form of escapism and that in fact any activity that involves

n a massive upsurge in computer-related entertainment, both in games and interactive entertainment and would be accompanied by a reduction of the appreciation and study of written

s the real aeroplane would have moved. This has been largely replaced in more modern simulators by a massive increase in the amount of information displayed on the screen, leading to the mind convincing itself that the physical movements are occurring,

of operation techniques would permit a surgeon to try out different approaches on the same s

Some common words found in the essay are:
Nelson ComputerDreams, Secondly VR, Virtual Reality, Firstly VR, Reality VR, virtual reality, form escapism, vr interface,
Approximate Word count = 1036
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)