Circulating images of virtual systems: trodes, gloves, and goggles in the eighties and nineties
Mizuko Ito, Scott S. Fisher · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1997
Since the late 80s, the popular imagination surrounding virtual systems has been lively and contested, an intriguing brew of cyberpunk fiction, government and corporate research, and product development, with a dash of countercultural excess. Virtual systems, in their myriad forms, have captured the interest not only of scientists and engineers, but also of a broad spectrum of social actors, including the popular and alternative press, fiction and comic writers, visual artists, film and television producers, as well as large sectors of a curious public, all of whom have produced diverse and creative images of these systems for a range of different audiences. The circulation of images of virtual systems points to some of the ways in which the production of technology can be located not only in engineering labs but also various realms of mass media and public culture. Focusing on images of gloves and goggles, this paper describes some of the pathways through which images of virtual systems have traveled.