Simulation and Its Discontents

Over the past twenty years, the technologies of simulation and visualization have changed our ways of looking at the world. In Simulation and Its Discontents, Sherry Turkle examines the now dominant medium of our working lives and finds that simulation has become its sensibility. We hear it in Turkles description of architecture students who no longer design with a pencil, of science and engineering students who admit that computer models seem more real than experiments in physical laboratories. Echoing architect Louis Kahn's famous question, What does a brick want?, Turkle asks, What does simulation want? Simulations want, even demand, immersion, and the benefits are clear.