(IN)VISIBLE

Acknowledgements.- Introduction.- Global Data Space: Early Visionaries: Paul Otlet - Information Architect; Otto Neurath - Socioscientific Visualization.- Mirror Worlds: The Universe in a Box?: Eye in the Sky; From Dymaxion to Google Earth; Visual Evidence: Aesthetics of (Un)certainty?; Data Vizualisations.- Lifelogging: A Concept of Sousveillance?: Global Sign Culture; Ubiquitous Surveillance; Sociospatial Archiving; How to Become Invisible?.- Blending the Real and the Virtual: Metaverse Interplays and Collisions; Personal Spaces; Spatial Orientation and Navigation; Communication, Participation and Exploitation.- Transitory Processes: Multiple Perspectives; Complexity; Practices.- Notes.- Image Sources.- Bibliography.

Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss is professor of eLearning in Visual Culture and head of the international MA-programme ePedagogy Design - Visual Knowledge Building at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. He studied philosophy, graphics, art and design education and communication theory in Salzburg, Vienna (MA, PhD) and the MIT Boston. During the 1980s and 90s he worked as cross-over artist, multi-media producer, university teacher and project manager. Previous to the professor appointment in 2003, he held the position of a research group leader at the EUN in Brussels. His research interests are in the visual knowledge building in collaborative learning processes, and the media-didactical implications how technology, pedagogy and organizational structure influence and constrain each other in the process of educational change. He has served as external assessor and reviewer for a number of scientific and research bodies, including the European Commission in the Programmes IST, eLearning, Media, Erasmus, etc. and has received several honours and scholarships.

"How can real and virtual space interactions generate novel forms of communicative, creative and social practices in global connected communities?" (Introduction) Stefan Sonvilla-Weiss attempts to answer his own rhetorical question in this rather deceptively slim volume. The book is deceptive in that at only 168 pages of pocket book size it seems slim, but every page is packed with tight, fast moving discussion and information. The book leans towards academic cultural theory discourse, however, I feel that it is still accessible to the general reader interested in the phenomenon of the Internet and its global citizens. "Multiple person-computer interfaces far exceed in their complexity and lack of overview the discussion currently taking place about possible social, aesthetic, legal and political effects on individuals and communities" (back cover). Learning to Act in the Metaverse explores the numerous possibilities and ramifications that open up when we engage with the new dataculture or Metaverse. 3D online worlds such as Second Life are often thought of as exclusively the Metaverse, but as Sonvilla-Weiss explains all aspects of the data driven, digitally networked (YOU)niverse are part of the Metaverse. How we act, behave (or misbehave) and learn to interact in the Metaverse is only just beginning to be analysed and articulated in books such as this. The book has a Bibliography, Notes to Chapters but no Index. There are five chapters as follows: Chapter 1 - Global Data Space: Early Visionaries discusses the work and futuristic vision of some great thinkers concerned with information and its dissemination, especially that of Paul Otlet. Chapter 2 - Mirror Worlds: The Universe In a Box? Explores such matters as the massive collection and exponential growth of data, Google Earth's global mapping and invasion of privacy, and the Dymaxion work of Buckminster Fuller. Chapter 3 - Lifelogging: A Concept of Sousveillance? Discusses the changes in privacy and surveillance