The Web is transforming into something a lot more interesting and engaging, including virtual worlds, synthetic personalities, conversational bots, agents, Star Trek holodeck-style 3D teleimmersion, and Raymond Kurzweil's Ramona virtual rock star (and virtual hostess of this site). We'll experiment with some of these new technologies right here.

How to Build a Virtual Human By Peter Plantec
Virtual Humans is the first book with instructions on designing a "V-human," or synthetic person. Using the programs on the included CD, you can create animated computer characters who can speak, dialogue intelligently, show facial emotions, have a personality and life story, and be used in real business projects. These excerpts explain how to get started. (Added October 20th 2003)

Remarks about Tod Machover In Presenting the 2003 Ray Kurzweil Award of Technology in Music By Ray Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil presented the 2003 Ray Kurzweil Award of Technology in Music to Tod Machover at the Fourth Annual Telluride Tech Festival (August 8-10, 2003). The award was in recognition of Machover's pioneering research at the MIT Media Lab in music technology, such as "hyperinstruments," as well as his achievements as composer and performer. (Added August 11th 2003)

Glitches Reloaded By Peter B. Lloyd
In Matrix Reloaded, how can Neo fly and use telekinesis if the Matrix is supposed to a physics simulation? Peter Lloyd decodes this and other technical enigmas--reverse-engineering the design of the Matrix and the "Meta-Matrix" of the underground Zion. And he delves into the rich philosophical and mythic elements of the film, such as the question of free will and who is the Architect and what does his speech tell us? (Added June 2nd 2003)

The Matrix Loses Its Way: Reflections on 'Matrix' and 'Matrix Reloaded' By Ray Kurzweil
The Matrix Reloaded is crippled by senseless fighting and chase scenes, weak plot and character development, tepid acting, and sophomoric dialogues. It shares the dystopian, Luddite perspective of the original movie, but loses the elegance, style, originality, and evocative philosophical musings of the original. (Added May 19th 2003)

GLITCHES IN THE MATRIX . . . AND HOW TO FIX THEM By Peter B. Lloyd
Why, exactly, do the rebels have to enter the Matrix via the phone system (which after all doesn't physically exist)? And what really happens when Neo takes the red pill (which also doesn't really exist)? And how does the Matrix know what fried chicken tastes like? Technologist and philosopher Peter Lloyd answers these questions and more. (Added March 3rd 2003)

THE HUMAN MACHINE MERGER: ARE WE HEADED FOR THE MATRIX? By Ray Kurzweil
Most viewers of The Matrix consider the more fanciful elements--intelligent computers, downloading information into the human brain, virtual reality indistinguishable from real life--to be fun as science fiction, but quite remote from real life. Most viewers would be wrong. As renowned computer scientist and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil explains, these elements are very feasible and are quite likely to be a reality within our lifetimes. (Added March 3rd 2003)

Whither Psychoanalysis in a Computer Culture? By Sherry Turkle
In the early 1980s, MIT professor Sherry Turkle first called the computer a "second self." With this essay, she presents a major new theory of "evocative objects": Wearable computers, PDAs, online multiple identities, "companion species" (such as quasi-alive virtual pets, digital dolls, and robot nurses for the elderly), "affective computing" devices (such as the human-like Kismet robot), and the imminent age of machines designed as relational artifacts are causing us to see ourselves and our world differently. They call for a new generation of psychoanalytic self-psychology to explore the human response and the human vulnerability to these objects. (Added October 24th 2002)

Synthespianism By Jeff Kleiser
The elusive goal of creating a photorealistic synthespian indistinguishable from a live actor has intrigued, taunted and tormented programmers for 30 years. We're 90 percent there, but efforts so far have failed to convey convincing nuances of facial expression, micro-motion, light, and texture. The exciting areas to be explored are those where the animator becomes analogous to the actor in a medium free of the constraints of live action photography...creating characters, roles, and plots that exploit our intimate familiarity with the human form and its subtleties, but don't attempt to recreate photorealistic renderings of it. (Added October 5th 2002)

Encompassing Education By Diana Walczak
Students in the 2020s will explore knowledge in customized, full-immersive, 3-D learning environments, able to see, hear, smell, and touch simulated objects and interact with synthespians to foster a heightened sense of curiosity, says Diana Walczak, Artistic Director and Cofounder, Kleiser-Walczak. (Added September 17th 2002)

Review: Vernor Vinge's 'Fast Times' By Hal Finney
Vernor Vinge's Hugo-award-winning short science fiction story "Fast Times at Fairmont High" takes place in a near future in which everyone lives in a ubiquitous, wireless, networked world using wearable computers and contacts or glasses on which computer graphics are projected to create an augmented reality. (Added September 5th 2002)

Reflections on S1m0ne By Ray Kurzweil
The movie Simone presents an "unrealistic notion of how technology is introduced to the world," says Ray Kurzweil in this review. He examines this portrayal from the perspective of his own transformation at the TED conference into Ramona, the state of the art for real-time virtual personality transformation two years ago. (Added August 25th 2002)

Movie reviews: A Beautiful Mind, Vanilla Sky, Waking Life By Amara D. Angelica
It's only a movie. Or is it? The three coolest films of this millennium so far tantalizingly blur the boundary between real and virtual worlds and suggest the question: Are you living in a simulation? Spoilage warning: the following reveals plot details. (Added January 15th 2002)

How To Live In A Simulation By Robin Hanson
If you might be living in a simulation then all else equal you should care less about others, live more for today, make your world look more likely to become rich, expect to and try more to participate in pivotal events, be more entertaining and praiseworthy, and keep the famous people around you happier and more interested in you. (Added January 14th 2002)

Remarks on Accepting the American Composers Orchestra Award By Ray Kurzweil
The Second Annual American Composers Orchestra Award for the Advancement of New Music in America was presented on November 13 to Ray Kurzweil by American Composers Orchestra. Kurzweil reflects on creativity and the jump from the blackboard to changing peoples' lives. (Added November 14th 2001)

The Human Machine Merger: Why We Will Spend Most of Our Time in Virtual Reality in the Twenty-first Century By Ray Kurzweil
Raymond Kurzweil's keynote address delivered at the 2000 ACM SIGGRAPH conference in New Orleans. (Added August 29th 2001)

The Emergent Self By Francesco Varela
The late Francesco Varela postulates that organisms have to be understood as a mesh of virtual selves--a bricolage of various identities. How virtual is the reality we live in, and do various realities emerge from cognitive and biological systems? (Added August 3rd 2001)

Seeing Through the Window By Neil Gershenfeld
What form will new human/computer interfaces take? Neil Gershenfeld discusses the past, present and future of how we interact with computers. (Added July 27th 2001)

Cyborg Babies and Cy-Dough-Plasm By Sherry Turkle
The way in which children interact with virtual worlds reveals insights into how we think of ourselves in virtual worlds. Sherry Turkle uses her observations of children to explore issues of consciousness and self in the context of virtual reality. (Added May 23rd 2001)

The Senses Have No Future By Hans Moravec
For Hans Moravec, our natural senses will swiftly become obsolete, as brain to computer interfaces become more common. Our physical environment will change as well, into what he calls a "densely connected cyberspace." Do our senses serve just to exchange information? (Added May 15th 2001)

Simulating Reality By Mike Weiner
Today's VR simulators, some using powerful supercomputers, allow us to experience realities that would be impossible in the real world, but their history actually goes back to ingenious mechanical musical instruments of the 19th century. (Added March 26th 2001)

Global Cyberspace and Personal Memespace By Bruce Damer
Virtual worlds populated by avatars of real people interacting with each other, bots, agents, and exotic life forms: is this the future face of cyberspace? (Added February 22nd 2001)

The Making of Ramona By Ray Kurzweil
On February 22, 2001, Ramona, a computer-generated virtual celebrity, made history at the TED11 conference. Here's the inside story. (Added February 22nd 2001)