Max, Velmans. “PHYSICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL AND VIRTUAL REALITIES.” University of London 45–60. Web.
Max Velmans is a professor at the University of London working in the Department of Psychology. Being an expert in psychology, he is well qualified in discussing the neurological effects of virtual reality. Velmans believes that the effects of virtual reality and its experiences far differ from that of physical and even psychological reality. The author’s main audience seems to lean towards students majoring in psychology or any others working in that field. With its above-average terminology and usage of diagrams to explain its arguments, this article is most likely not geared for the average reader.
Being a psychologist, the author may over analyze the differences between the different realities. Although I understand that there may be slight neurological and cognitive differences in the varying experiences, I also think that if a theoretical perfect virtual reality were to exist, the differences would be more negligible than what the author is proposing. Other than that, it tends to be more wrapped up in definitions making the whole article surprisingly neutral as a whole. Perhaps the greatest strength of this article is that it touches upon all five senses. He explains the projections of virtual reality on people through the different senses that are triggered. The article is extremely thorough and does a great job defining the different realities as well as explaining what it truly means to be in a virtual reality. However, it is also very concerned with definitions. While it helps better our understanding of virtual reality, or group will get no opinions, case studies or examples to further illustrate our cause. For the most part, it supports our thesis that virtual reality will give its users a unique experience, but because the author spends so much time defining terminology, the article tends to be quite neutral. Still, this article is very appropriate for our paper because it explores all the different ways something can be a virtual reality. By focusing on the projections working on our senses, the article becomes even more relevant as we are talking about synesthesia.
J.D., Sartain. “Virtual Reality Gets Real.” N.p., 24 Sept. 2012. Web.
The author, J.D. Sartain, is a simple freelance journalist and therefore is not affiliated with any organization. The author does not have real thesis or stance but simply presents the various forms of virtual reality that already exist. The author’s intended audience is the average user and anyone who wants to find out more about virtual reality technology. The article is supplemented by an easy-to-use slideshow that has images and small paragraphs of text to supplement each picture. The presentation is simple meaning that the author wants his article to be easily accessible.
As I mentioned before, the article takes no real stance on virtual reality. It simply presents facts about the virtual reality technologies that are either in development or have already been released. Being a simple journalist without a psychological or scientific background, I cannot see him swaying the information in any way. The strengths of this article is that is has no bias and that it also presents an easy-to-read list of virtual reality technologies. It gives eleven different examples of devices and programs that utilize virtual reality giving readers a broad understanding of the way science is pursuing this field of study. On the other hand, the author has no scientific background and the article does little to go in depth with this topic. Aside from just referring to the article for examples of technology, it does not add much for our paper. The article does not really support nor negate our thesis. It does, however, still hold relevance as we would obviously want to compare our project with technologies that already exist. With this information we can fine tune our product by looking at what is already available and how our technology can offer something different.