Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. International Journal of e-Collaboration, 2(1), 61-64, January-March 2006 61 Virtual Reality Technology Reviewed by Ned Kock, Texas A&M International University, USA While e-collaboration technologies have been around for more than 30 years, the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web has revolutionized the way in which these technologies are implemented and used (Kock, 2005, 2005b), arguably in a way that many technology trailblazers see as somewhat disappointing. Initially, in the 1960s and 1970s, these technolo- gies supported primarily geographically distributed interaction among a relatively small number of individuals housed in re- search centers and universities. The so- phistication of e-collaboration technolo- gies steadily increased in the 1980s, par- ticularly in terms of task-specific features (Bannon, 1993; Grudin, 1994). This pe- riod saw the development of new e-col- laboration technology paradigms (Briggs et al., 2003; Markus, 2005) such as those underlying group decision support systems (e.g., Meetingworks) and e-collaboration development suites (e.g., Lotus Notes). Since the Internet-based infrastruc- ture to support distributed interaction was not fully in place in the 1980s or even in the early 1990s, powerful and sophisti- cated e-collaboration technologies in this period became largely restricted to sup- porting collaborative work and commu- nication among collocated or quasi-col- located groups of individuals (e.g., indi- viduals working in the same campus and interacting through an extended local area network). Later, especially since the mid- 1990s, and in an apparent technologically backward move, much less powerful and sophisticated Internet- and Web-based e- collaboration technologies appeared in the market, primarily because of the relatively low bandwidth available. This is the pe- riod in which we are living now, where the promise of instant and high-quality movie watching, conference participation, and other bandwidth-intensive activities over BOOK REVIEW Virtual Reality Technology (2nd ed.) Grigore C. Burdea and Philippe Coiffet 2003, Wiley-Interscience ISBN: 0-471-36089-9, 464 pages