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    The Sensory Deception
    The Sensory Deception
    The Sensory Deception
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Sensory Deception

    Written by Ransom Stephens

    Narrated by Jeff Cummings

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    “I can’t believe I ate a seal. And really enjoyed it.”

    Moments after venture capitalist Gloria Baradaran experiences what it’s like to be a polar bear—really be a polar bear—she knows she’s found something revolutionary. Farley Rutherford and his team—migraine-tortured neurologist “Chopper” Vittori and über-geek engineer Ringo Hayes—have created sensory saturation, a virtual reality system that drops users into the psyches of endangered animals as they fight for survival, and they believe the profound experience could turn the indifferent masses into avid environmentalists.

    Ringo’s hardware is ready to go, but the pressures to get the system off the ground are immense. The money-men want more bang for their buck, and that includes bigger, more dangerous animals, and—more than anything—the ability to turn the machines into profitable games. But to Farely and his team, this is anything but a game. To some, in fact, this is a cause they’d kill for…

    The Sensory Deception is a mind-blowing, globe-trotting ride that will take readers from cut-throat Silicon Valley boardrooms to the pirate ships off the Somali coast to the devastated rain forests of the Amazon all to ask the question: What is a human life worth compared to that of an entire planet?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateAug 6, 2013
    ISBN9781469290607
    The Sensory Deception
    Author

    Ransom Stephens

    Ransom Stephens is a former physics professor and fifth-generation Californian. After earning his PhD from the University of California–Santa Barbara, he taught at the University of Texas at Arlington and conducted cutting-edge research at high energy physics labs across the United States and Europe. He then moved into the high-tech arena, leaving academia to work for a wireless web start-up. He’s now a science writer and high-tech consultant living in Northern California’s Wine country, though he prefers beer. More about Stephens can be found at his website, http://www.ransomstephens.com.

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    Reviews for The Sensory Deception

    3/5

    11 ratings2 reviews

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    • 3/5
      The first half of the book is slow, with a lot of time spent on the workings of venture capital and startups in Silicon Valley. The second half provided much more action and excitement. However, most of the characters felt shallow, and a lot of the situations stretched belivability to, if not a little beyond the breaking point.

      This a fun read once you get past the tedium at the beginning.
    • 5/5
      I received a free copy of the ARC edition of this book in exchange for a review.The Sensory Deception is an amazing ride. Ransom Stephens takes you from the moneyed halls of venture capitalists in Silicon Valley to the dirt poor coast of Somalia's pirates and then onto the deep jungle of the Amazon Basin. The sense of wonder he conveys using the idealism and technical know-how of the entrepreneurial protagonists is matched by the thrilling settings and the situations in which they find themselves. I highly recommend you read this book, it's incredible.Farley Rutherford and his team of technical wizards have invented a device that allows a person to totally experience the world from the viewpoint of another being---human or otherwise---seeing, hearing, smelling what they do. This book is about how they use this technology to try to change the world. Let's hope that this is a case where reality soon catches up to fiction because this is a device that can really change minds and souls. Imagine experiencing the loss of polar ice from the perspective of a polar bear: sensing in hours what the polar bear endures across weeks searching for a next meal---but also being immersed in the joy of swimming with those powerful limbs, stalking, killing and eating a seal from the bear's perspective, temporarily losing your human perspective. Stephens conveys this in a visceral way that is believable and convincing. This is one hell of a book!