Description
Winner, 2023 Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Technics, Media Ecology Association
Although virtual reality promises to immerse a person in another world, its true power lies in its ability to sever a person's spatial situatedness in this one. This is especially clear in Japan, where the VR headset has been embraced as a way to block off existing social environments and reroute perception into more malleable virtual platforms. Is immersion just another name for enclosure?
In this groundbreaking analysis of virtual reality, Paul Roquet uncovers how the technology is reshaping the politics of labor, gender, home, and nation. He examines how VR in Japan diverged from American militarism and techno-utopian visions and became a tool for renegotiating personal space. Individuals turned to the VR headset to immerse themselves in three-dimensional worlds drawn from manga, video games, and genre literature. The Japanese government promised VR-operated robots would enable a new era of remote work, targeting those who could not otherwise leave home. Middle-aged men and corporate brands used VR to reimagine themselves through the virtual bodies of anime-styled teenage girls. At a time when digital platforms continue to encroach on everyday life, The Immersive Enclosure takes a critical look at these attempts to jettison existing social realities and offers a bold new approach for understanding the media environments to come.
About the Author
Paul Roquet is associate professor of media studies and Japan studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self (2016).
Reviews
The Immersive Enclosure is timely in the most profound sense: it offers a glimpse of a future that we need to act upon now in order to address its potential pitfalls, which include the wholesale commercial mediation of experience. Paul Roquet does a brilliant job of drawing on the culturally specific case of Japan's uptake of VR to provide insights of universal relevance and urgent importance as we confront the prospect that reality itself is becoming the next frontier of the surveillance economy. -- Mark Andrejevic, author of Automated Media
Paul Roquet's timely book offers a refreshing new take on VR as a consumer technology. Situating the development of VR within Japan's robust media networks of anime, manga, visual novels, and video games, he deftly illuminates the ways VR is also seen as a panacea to the country's shrinking labor force. -- Yuriko Furuhata, author of Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control
This book is a must-read for scholars in media studies and general readers alike fascinated by the flawed revolutionary potential of VR. Roquet makes a powerful case for attending to the cultural and aesthetic conditions of possibility necessary for embracing virtual reality. -- James J. Hodge, author of Sensations of History: Animation and New Media Art
Immersive Enclosure tells a startlingly different story about VR. Working expertly across discourses, technologies, and fantasies about virtual reality in Japan, Roquet reveals a homology between the structuring of perceptual space and social space that utterly challenges our understanding of the past and future of VR media. The urgent question emerges with breathtaking clarity: what to make of a collective desire for one-person space? -- Thomas Lamarre, author of The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media
An intriguing analysis of virtual reality as a new vessel for a contaminated kind of individualism, the product of people retreating deeper into personal devices instead of the larger, collective world. * Kotaku *
[This book] offers a bounty of insights for historians of technology. -- Yulia Frumer * H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews *
The Immersive Enclosure offers an antidote to Western-focused, and especially American-focused, studies of VR, while also underscoring the universal promises and perils that VR holds for contemporary, globalized societies everywhere. . . Highly recommended. * Choice Reviews *
Roquet successfully demonstrates how virtual reality in Japan emerges from a uniquely cultural and historical perspective, inspiring others to address the local specificity of their virtual reality. The Immersive Enclosure can be their guide. -- Michael Vallance * Japan Review *
Readers willing to enclose themselves in the pages of The Immersive Enclosure: Virtual Reality in Japan can expect to perceive with greater clarity the relationship between perception and bias, especially regarding virtual reality (VR) technologies. Paul Roquet's account of the development of VR helps uncover implications of the media ecological intersections between a medium, its name, its environment, and its relationship to cultural and political biases. -- Natalia Wohar * Explorations in Media Ecology *
The Immersive Enclosure sets a high bar for research quality, clarity of writing, and insightful arguments. It is strongly recommended for apprehending the history, development, and significance of a technology in Japan that is poised to shape our collective media future in new and potentially unforeseen ways. -- Ben Whaley * Journal of Japanese Studies *
Roquet's insights offer a fresh perspective on how the history and development of emerging technologies could shape the future of digital governance, labor markets, and interpersonal relationships. * Convergence *
Awards
Winner of Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Technics, Media Ecology Association 2023.
Book Information
ISBN 9780231205351
Author Paul Roquet
Format Paperback
Page Count 264
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
Although virtual reality promises to immerse a person in another world, its true power lies in its ability to sever a person's spatial situatedness in this one. This is especially clear in Japan, where the VR headset has been embraced as a way to block off existing social environments and reroute perception into more malleable virtual platforms. Is immersion just another name for enclosure?
In this groundbreaking analysis of virtual reality, Paul Roquet uncovers how the technology is reshaping the politics of labor, gender, home, and nation. He examines how VR in Japan diverged from American militarism and techno-utopian visions and became a tool for renegotiating personal space. Individuals turned to the VR headset to immerse themselves in three-dimensional worlds drawn from manga, video games, and genre literature. The Japanese government promised VR-operated robots would enable a new era of remote work, targeting those who could not otherwise leave home. Middle-aged men and corporate brands used VR to reimagine themselves through the virtual bodies of anime-styled teenage girls. At a time when digital platforms continue to encroach on everyday life, The Immersive Enclosure takes a critical look at these attempts to jettison existing social realities and offers a bold new approach for understanding the media environments to come.
About the Author
Paul Roquet is associate professor of media studies and Japan studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self (2016).
Reviews
The Immersive Enclosure is timely in the most profound sense: it offers a glimpse of a future that we need to act upon now in order to address its potential pitfalls, which include the wholesale commercial mediation of experience. Paul Roquet does a brilliant job of drawing on the culturally specific case of Japan's uptake of VR to provide insights of universal relevance and urgent importance as we confront the prospect that reality itself is becoming the next frontier of the surveillance economy. -- Mark Andrejevic, author of Automated Media
Paul Roquet's timely book offers a refreshing new take on VR as a consumer technology. Situating the development of VR within Japan's robust media networks of anime, manga, visual novels, and video games, he deftly illuminates the ways VR is also seen as a panacea to the country's shrinking labor force. -- Yuriko Furuhata, author of Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control
This book is a must-read for scholars in media studies and general readers alike fascinated by the flawed revolutionary potential of VR. Roquet makes a powerful case for attending to the cultural and aesthetic conditions of possibility necessary for embracing virtual reality. -- James J. Hodge, author of Sensations of History: Animation and New Media Art
Immersive Enclosure tells a startlingly different story about VR. Working expertly across discourses, technologies, and fantasies about virtual reality in Japan, Roquet reveals a homology between the structuring of perceptual space and social space that utterly challenges our understanding of the past and future of VR media. The urgent question emerges with breathtaking clarity: what to make of a collective desire for one-person space? -- Thomas Lamarre, author of The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media
An intriguing analysis of virtual reality as a new vessel for a contaminated kind of individualism, the product of people retreating deeper into personal devices instead of the larger, collective world. * Kotaku *
[This book] offers a bounty of insights for historians of technology. -- Yulia Frumer * H-Sci-Med-Tech, H-Net Reviews *
The Immersive Enclosure offers an antidote to Western-focused, and especially American-focused, studies of VR, while also underscoring the universal promises and perils that VR holds for contemporary, globalized societies everywhere. . . Highly recommended. * Choice Reviews *
Roquet successfully demonstrates how virtual reality in Japan emerges from a uniquely cultural and historical perspective, inspiring others to address the local specificity of their virtual reality. The Immersive Enclosure can be their guide. -- Michael Vallance * Japan Review *
Readers willing to enclose themselves in the pages of The Immersive Enclosure: Virtual Reality in Japan can expect to perceive with greater clarity the relationship between perception and bias, especially regarding virtual reality (VR) technologies. Paul Roquet's account of the development of VR helps uncover implications of the media ecological intersections between a medium, its name, its environment, and its relationship to cultural and political biases. -- Natalia Wohar * Explorations in Media Ecology *
The Immersive Enclosure sets a high bar for research quality, clarity of writing, and insightful arguments. It is strongly recommended for apprehending the history, development, and significance of a technology in Japan that is poised to shape our collective media future in new and potentially unforeseen ways. -- Ben Whaley * Journal of Japanese Studies *
Roquet's insights offer a fresh perspective on how the history and development of emerging technologies could shape the future of digital governance, labor markets, and interpersonal relationships. * Convergence *
Awards
Winner of Lewis Mumford Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Technics, Media Ecology Association 2023.
Book Information
ISBN 9780231205351
Author Paul Roquet
Format Paperback
Page Count 264
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
