Electric Language (Yale U. Press, 1987, 1999) was the first book to explore the  trade-offs between print and digital text. The first edition of Electric Language was published in 1987. Electric Language at Amazon The 1999 second edition of Electric Language includes a Foreword  by the Yale computer scientist, David Gelernter, who was a victim of the Unabomber. The 1999 edition also has an Introduction by the author that updates the theory for the Web. Cyber-editor  Julian Dibbell at Amazon called the book "a model for the kind of philosophical attention that computers still don't get enough of." See review by Julian Dibbell at Amazon

Virtual Realism (Oxford U. Press, 1998) begins where the Metaphysics left off. Once we discover the new  reality layer, we need look at the social and aesthetic impact of virtuality. "Virtual Realism" describes the art of virtual worlds and explores its social impact. Virtual Realism

Chapter Two, for instance, treats the Unabomber crisis and reveals the dystopian / utopian dialectic: Idealists proclaim a networked world where new communities come together  while feet-on-the-ground realists attack computer culture as a distraction from saving the earth. Society swings back and forth between enthusiasm and rejection. Virtual Realism describes a middle path of existential balance.

 

The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality was published by Oxford University Press in 1993, and two of its chapters were put online by a professor for a 1996 course taught at Cornell UniversityMetaphysics of VR with   permission of the publisher. Links below take you to those chapters. The colorful book jacket of MVR  shows me in the Nintendo PowerGlove, under the dazzling lights of French photo-journalist  Catherine Leroy.

 

Here are some Reviews of The  Metaphysics of Virtual Reality

 

The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic is a translation from German of the book by Martin Heidegger entitled Die Metaphysische Anfangsgruende der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz. Translating this book came from my studies of Heidegger's philosophy of technology during a Fulbright Fellowship to Freiburg, Germany. The study of Leibniz was important for me because Leibniz developed the binary logic used by computers and Leibniz also created a proto-computer in the 1670's. Heidegger's monumental study of Leibnizean logic gave me an appreciative yet critical understanding of the foundations of  information theory.  On my website, you can also find the Translator's Introduction that shows an early interest in multiple computer worlds theory, which later fed my work in virtual worlds theory and design.