Thammasat University students who are interested in philosophy, psychology, social science, human geography, tourism studies, sociology, virtual travel, psychosocial studies, cyberpsychology, digital environments, interactive behavior, digital tourism, and related subjects may find a newly available book useful.
The Psychosocial Reality of Digital Travel: Being in Virtual Places is an Open Access book, available for free download at this link:
https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/51933
It is by Ingvar Tjostheim, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Computing Center and Professor John A. Waterworth who teaches in the Department of Informatics at Umeå University, Sweden.
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of virtual reality.
As the publisher’s description notes,
This open access book takes a fresh look at the nature of the digital travel experience, at a time when more and more people are engaged in online social interaction, games, and other virtual experiences essentially involving online visits to other places. It examines whether these experiences can seem real to the virtual traveller and, if so, under what conditions and on what grounds. The book unpacks philosophical theories relevant to the feeling of being somewhere, emphasising the importance of perception and being-in-the-world. Notions of place are outlined, based on work in tourism studies, human geography, and other applied social fields, with an aim to investigate how and when different experiences of place arise for the traveller and how these relate to telepresence – the sense of being there in another place through digital media. Findings from recent empirical studies of digital travel are presented, including a survey from which the characteristics of “digital travellers” are identified. A review of selected interactive design trends and possibilities leads to the conclusion, which draws these strands together and looks to the future of this topical and expanding field.
The book’s abstract follows:
When physical travel to a specific place is prohibited or otherwise difficult or impossible, digital travel provides a promising alternative. The technology to do this is now widely available and many people have the possibility to meet with others digitally, and thus alleviate the social effects of physical isolation. Digital travel can also be source of pleasure and entertainment, and many people spend time exploring and interacting in digital places, realistically rendering in 3D games. But despite the recent upsurge in virtual social interaction, it does not meet many of the psychosocial aspects of the travel experience. In this book, we take a fresh look at the nature of the telepresence experience in digital environments. We also address a number of relevant questions, such as whether these experiences can seem real to the digital traveller and, if so, under what conditions and on what grounds.
The authors observe in an introduction:
People increasingly travel, visit and meet other people digitally in computer-mediated environments. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the restrictions on physical meetings and travel that have come with it, has resulted in an enormous change in behavior and attitudes towards the practicality and acceptability of replacing physical encounters with virtual ones. Prior to this, videoconferencing and other technologies were already used in business and as a way for families and friends to keep in touch over distances. Recent developments have led to many other kinds of meetings and events taking place without physical travel; for example, concerts, school and college classes, sports events, academic and other conferences, training and personal development courses and medical consultations. Many computer games use realistically presented (distant) places as the venue for action. These may be fictional, but are often digital versions of actual physical places, such as museums, famous localities, sports stadiums, motor racetracks, cities and so on. In these and other virtual environments, the visitor may explore and sightsee in ways that are somewhat analogous to being a tourist in a physical location. But there are significant differences between being a virtual tourist and physically travelling for pleasure to places people live and work, as a tourist traditionally does. To travel to a particular place at a particular time has always been important for people. When physical travel to a specific place is prohibited or otherwise difficult or impossible, virtual travel provides a promising alternative. If we cannot go to an event and meet our friends, colleagues or new acquaintances there, we can still meet via a teleconference system, in a virtual room. The technology to do this is now widely available and many people have the possibility to meet with others in virtuality, and so overcome—or at least alleviate—the social effects of physical isolation, which is known to be detrimental to both physical and mental wellbeing. But despite the recent upsurge in virtual social interaction, many people feel that they are missing something important—the travel experience, visiting places and meeting people face to face. And there is evidence that such virtual interactions can be stressful and more tiring than their physical counterparts. The experience of physical place is also undergoing profound changes, through the widespread adoption of mobile technology and, in particular, the almost universal use of mobile phones. The way mobile phones are used has been compared to a snail carrying its home on its back. Being able to attend to the phone, and via the phone to distant people and places, can provide a “home” into which we can retreat or return. Wherever we are, however socially dull or difficult that place may be, we can always take out our phone and “escape”. A recent study (Miller et al., 2021) found that users across many age groups feel about their phones in analogous ways to how they feel about their homes…
Meetings between people increasingly take place in virtual spaces, via teleconferencing systems such as Zoom, Teams and Skype. But these meetings do not always satisfy the needs of the attendees, and may lead to fatigue, to some extent by violating social interaction norms. For example, in a typical working configuration at home, with a personal computer with embedded camera, the people with which we meet may appear too close for comfort, and we are also not used to seeing ourselves during meetings in a way that may make us overly self-conscious…In these environments, people have what seem to be face-to-face encounters, and yet they are not, since the participants are in different physical places and do not share the real experience of being in the same place…
In what follows, we take a fresh look at the nature of the telepresence experience in digital environments, at a time when more and more people are engaged in meetings and other interactive experiences within virtual environments (VEs) of one kind or another. We also address a number of relevant questions, such as whether these experiences can seem real to the virtual traveller and, if so, under what conditions and on what grounds? And more generally to what extent can technology be designed to make up for the needs that physical travel fills, in light of findings on physical and social presence in virtual environments? Can a “home-away-back-home” metaphor derived from tourism be usefully applied to virtual travel, for example? Can virtual spaces become true social places that satisfy the requirements for host–guest interactions, and become fulfilling destinations for travel? We know that interactive technology can be used to create a convincing fantasy world, and also to replicate a place that actually exists. If a VR environment replicates a place that a person can visit, what experience is created and how can we understand it? This is an underlying theme in the book and is directly related to our choice for discussion of theories and findings from a range of fields, including philosophy, psychology and social science, telepresence research, human geography and tourism studies.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)