In philosophy, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. A still more broad definition includes everything that has existed, exists, or will exist, not just in the mind, or even more broadly also including what is only in the mind.

Historically, philosophers have sometimes considered reality to include nonexistent things such as "gold mountains" in a sense referred to as a ''subsistence'', as well. By contrast ''existence'' is often restricted solely to being (compare with ''nature'').

Reality is often contrasted with what is imaginary, delusional, in the mind, dreams, what is abstract, what is false, or what is fictional. To reify is to make more real, and to abstract is the opposite. The truth refers to what is real, while falsity refers to what is not. Fictions are not considered real.

Related concepts

Truth vs. Fact

The term "truth" has no single definition about which a majority of professional philosophers and scholars agree, and various theories of truth continue to be debated. Metaphysical objectivism holds that truths are independent of our beliefs; except for propositions that are actually about our beliefs or sensations, what is true or false is independent of what we think is true or false. According to some trends in philosophy, such as postmodernism/post-structuralism, truth is subjective. When two or more individuals agree upon the interpretation and experience of a particular event, a consensus about an event and its experience begins to be formed. This being common to a few individuals or a larger group, then becomes the "truth" as seen and agreed upon by a certain set of people — the consensus reality. Thus one particular group may have a certain set of agreed-upon truths, while another group might have a different set. This allows different communities and societies to have very different notions of reality and truth about the external world. The religion and beliefs of people or communities are one example of this level of socially constructed reality. Truth cannot simply be considered truth if one speaks and another hears because individual bias and fallibility challenge the idea that certainty or objectivity are easily grasped. For anti-realists, the inaccessibility of any final, objective truth means that there is no truth beyond the socially accepted consensus. (Although this means there are many truths, not a single truth.)

For realists, the world is a set of definite facts, which exist independently of human perceptions ("The world is all that is the case" — ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''), and these facts are the final arbiter of truth. Michael Dummett expresses this in terms of the principle of bivalence: Lady Macbeth had three children or she did not; a tree falls or it does not. A statement will be true if it corresponds to these facts — ''even if the correspondence cannot be established''. Thus the dispute between the realist and anti-realist conception of truth hinges on reactions to the epistemic accessibility (knowability, graspability) of facts.

A "fact" or factual entity, on the other hand, is a phenomenon that is perceived as an elemental principle . It is rarely one that could be subject to personal interpretation. Instead, it is most often an observed phenomenon of the natural world. The proposition that "viewed from most places on Earth, the Sun rises in the east" is a fact. It is a fact for people belonging to any group or nationality, regardless of which language they speak or which part of the hemisphere they come from. The Galilean proposition in support of the Copernican theory, that the sun is the center of the solar system, is one that states the fact of the natural world. However, during his lifetime Galileo was ridiculed for that factual proposition, because far too few people had a consensus about it in order to accept it as a truth, and at the time the Ptolemaic model was just as accurate a predictor. Fewer propositions are factual in content in the world, as compared to the many truths shared by various communities, which are also fewer than the innumerable individual world views. Much of scientific exploration, experimentation, interpretation and analysis is done on this level.

This view of reality is expressed in Philip K. Dick's statement that "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

Reality, world views, and theories of reality

A common colloquial usage would have ''reality'' mean "perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes toward reality," as in "My reality is not your reality." This is often used just as a colloquialism indicating that the parties to a conversation agree, or should agree, not to quibble over deeply different conceptions of what is real. For example, in a religious discussion between friends, one might say (attempting humor), "You might disagree, but in my reality, everyone goes to heaven."

Reality can be defined in a way that links it to world views or parts of them (conceptual frameworks): Reality is the totality of all things, structures (actual and conceptual), events (past and present) and phenomena, whether observable or not. It is what a world view (whether it be based on individual or shared human experience) ultimately attempts to describe or map.

Certain ideas from physics, philosophy, sociology, literary criticism, and other fields shape various theories of reality. One such belief is that there simply and literally ''is'' no reality beyond the perceptions or beliefs we each have about reality. Such attitudes are summarized in the popular statement, "Perception is reality" or "Life is how you perceive reality" or "reality is what you can get away with" (Robert Anton Wilson), and they indicate anti-realism — that is, the view that there is no objective reality, whether acknowledged explicitly or not.

Many of the concepts of science and philosophy are often defined culturally and socially. This idea was elaborated by Thomas Kuhn in his book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' (1962). The Social Construction of Reality a book about the sociology of knowledge written by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann was published in 1966.

Western philosophy

Philosophy addresses two different aspects of the topic of reality: the nature of reality itself, and the relationship between the mind (as well as language and culture) and reality.

On the one hand, ontology is the study of being, and the central topic of the field is couched, variously, in terms of being, existence, "what is", and reality. The task in ontology is to describe the most general categories of reality and how they are interrelated. If — what is rarely done — a philosopher wanted to proffer a positive definition of the concept "reality", it would be done under this heading. As explained above, some philosophers draw a distinction between reality and existence. In fact, many analytic philosophers today tend to avoid the term "real" and "reality" in discussing ontological issues. But for those who would treat "is real" the same way they treat "exists", one of the leading questions of analytic philosophy has been whether existence (or reality) is a property of objects. It has been widely held by analytic philosophers that it is ''not'' a property at all, though this view has lost some ground in recent decades.

On the other hand, particularly in discussions of objectivity that have feet in both metaphysics and epistemology, philosophical discussions of "reality" often concern the ways in which reality is, or is not, in some way ''dependent upon'' (or, to use fashionable jargon, "constructed" out of) mental and cultural factors such as perceptions, beliefs, and other mental states, as well as cultural artifacts, such as religions and political movements, on up to the vague notion of a common cultural world view, or Weltanschauung.

The view that there is a reality independent of any beliefs, perceptions, etc., is called realism. More specifically, philosophers are given to speaking about "realism ''about''" this and that, such as realism about universals or realism about the external world. Generally, where one can identify any class of object, the existence or essential characteristics of which is said not to depend on perceptions, beliefs, language, or any other human artifact, one can speak of "realism ''about''" that object.

One can also speak of ''anti''-realism about the same objects. ''Anti-realism'' is the latest in a long series of terms for views opposed to realism. Perhaps the first was idealism, so called because reality was said to be in the mind, or a product of our ''ideas''. Berkeleyan idealism is the view, propounded by the Irish empiricist George Berkeley, that the objects of perception are actually ideas in the mind. On this view, one might be tempted to say that reality is a "mental construct"; this is not quite accurate, however, since on Berkeley's view perceptual ideas are created and coordinated by God. By the 20th century, views similar to Berkeley's were called phenomenalism. Phenomenalism differs from Berkeleyan idealism primarily in that Berkeley believed that minds, or souls, are not merely ideas nor made up of ideas, whereas varieties of phenomenalism, such as that advocated by Russell, tended to go farther to say that the mind itself is merely a collection of perceptions, memories, etc., and that there is no mind or soul over and above such mental events. Finally, anti-realism became a fashionable term for ''any'' view which held that the existence of some object depends upon the mind or cultural artifacts. The view that the so-called external world is really merely a social, or cultural, artifact, called social constructionism, is one variety of anti-realism. Cultural relativism is the view that social issues such as morality are not absolute, but at least partially cultural artifact.

A correspondence theory of knowledge about what exists claims that "true" knowledge of reality represents accurate correspondence of statements about and images of reality with the actual reality that the statements or images are attempting to represent. For example, the scientific method can verify that a statement is true based on the observable evidence that a thing exists. Many humans can point to the Rocky Mountains and say that this mountain range exists, and continues to exist even if no one is observing it or making statements about it.

Being

The nature of being is a perennial topic in metaphysics. For, instance Parmenides taught that reality was a single unchanging Being, whereas Heraclitus wrote that all things flow. The 20th century philosopher Heidegger thought previous philosophers have lost sight the question of Being (qua Being) in favour of the questions of beings (existing things), so that a return to the Parmenidean approach was needed. An ontological catalogue is an attempt to list the fundamental constituents of reality. The question of whether or not existence is a predicate has been discussed since the Early Modern period, not least in relation to the ontological argument for the existence of God. Existence, ''that'' something is, has been contrasted with ''essence'', the question of ''what'' something is. Since existence without essence seems blank, it associated with nothingness by philosophers such as Hegel. Nihilism represents and extremely negative view of being, the absolute a positive one.

Perception

The question of direct or "naïve" realism, as opposed to indirect or "representational" realism, arises in the philosophy of perception and of mind out of the debate over the nature of conscious experience; the epistemological question of whether the world we see around us is the real world itself or merely an internal perceptual copy of that world generated by neural processes in our brain. Naïve realism is known as ''direct'' realism when developed to counter ''indirect'' or representative realism, also known as epistemological dualism, the philosophical position that our conscious experience is not of the real world itself but of an internal representation, a miniature virtual-reality replica of the world.

Abstract objects and mathematics

The status of abstract entities, particularly numbers, is a topic of discussion in mathematics.

In the philosophy of mathematics, the best known form of realism about numbers is Platonic realism, which grants them abstract, immaterial existence. Other forms of realism identify mathematics with the concrete physical universe.

Anti-realist stances include formalism and fictionalism.

Some approaches are selectively realistic about some mathematical objects but not others. Finitism rejects infinite quantities. ultra-finitism accepts finite quantities up to a certain amount. Constructivism and intuitionism are realistic about objects that can be explicitly constructed, but reject the use of the principle of the excluded middle to prove existence by reductio ad absurdum.

The traditional debate has focused on whether an abstract (immaterial, intelligible) realm of numbers has existed ''in addition to'' the physical (sensible, concrete) world. A recent development is the mathematical universe hypothesis, the theory that ''only'' a mathematical world exists, with the finite, physical world being an illusion within it.

Properties

The problem of universals is an ancient problem in metaphysics about whether universals exist. Universals are general or abstract qualities, characteristics, properties, kinds or relations, such as being male/female, solid/liquid/gas or a certain colour, that can be predicated of individuals or particulars or that individuals or particulars can be regarded as sharing or participating in. For example, Scott, Pat, and Chris have in common the universal quality of ''being human'' or ''humanity''.

The realist school claims that universals are real — they exist and are distinct from the particulars that instantiate them. There are various forms of realism. Two major forms are Platonic realism and Aristotelian realism. ''Platonic realism'' is the view that universals are real entities and they exist independent of particulars. ''Aristotelian realism'', on the other hand, is the view that universals are real entities, but their existence is dependent on the particulars that exemplify them.

Nominalism and conceptualism are the main forms of anti-realism about universals.

Time and space

A traditional realist position in ontology is that time and space have existence apart from the human mind. Idealists deny or doubt the existence of objects independent of the mind. Some anti-realists whose ontological position is that objects outside the mind do exist, nevertheless doubt the independent existence of time and space.

Kant, in the ''Critique of Pure Reason'', described time as an ''a priori'' notion that, together with other ''a priori'' notions such as space, allows us to comprehend sense experience. Kant denies that either space or time are substance, entities in themselves, or learned by experience; he holds rather that both are elements of a systematic framework we use to structure our experience. Spatial measurements are used to quantify how far apart objects are, and temporal measurements are used to quantitatively compare the interval between (or duration of) events. Although space and time are held to be''transcedentally ideal'' in this sense, they are also ''empirically real'', i.e. not mere illusions.

Idealist writers such as J. M. E. McTaggart in ''The Unreality of Time'' have argued that time is an illusion.

As well as differing about the reality of time as a whole, metaphysical theories of time can differ in their ascriptions of reality to the past, present and future separately.

Presentism holds that the past and future are unreal, and only an ever changing present is real.

The block universe theory, also known as Eternalism, holds that past, present and future are all real, but the passage of time is an illusion. It is often said to have a scientific basis in relativity.

The growing block universe theory holds that past and present are real, but the future is not.

Time, and the related concepts of process and evolution are central to the system-building metaphysics of A. N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne.

Possible worlds

The term "possible world" goes back to Leibniz's theory of possible worlds, used to analyse necessity, possibility, and similar modal notions. Modal realism is the view, notably propounded by David Kellogg Lewis, that all possible worlds are as real as the actual world. In short: the actual world is regarded as merely one among an infinite set of logically possible worlds, some "nearer" to the actual world and some more remote. Other theorists may use the Possible World framework to express and explore problems without committing to it ontologically. Possible world theory is related to alethic logic: a proposition is ''necessary'' if it is true in all possible worlds, and ''possible'' if it is true in at least one. The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is a similar idea in science.

Theories of everything (TOE) and philosophy

The philosophical implications of a physical TOE are frequently debated. For example, if philosophical physicalism is true, a physical TOE will coincide with a philosophical theory of everything.

The "system building" style of metaphysics attempts to answer ''all'' the important questions in a coherent way, providing a complete picture of the world. Plato and Aristotle could be said to be early examples of comprehensive systems. In the early modern period (17th and 18th centuries), the system-building ''scope'' of philosophy is often linked to the ratioanlist ''method'' of philosophy,that is the technique of deducing the nature of the world by pure ''apriori'' reason. Examples from the early modern period include the Leibniz's Monadology, Descarte's Dualism, Spinoza's Monism. Hegel's Absolute idealism and Whitehead's Process philosophy were later systems.

Other philosophers do not believe its techniques can aim so high. Some scientists think a more mathematical approach than philosophy is needed for a TOE, for instance Stephen Hawking wrote in ''A Brief History of Time'' that even if we had a TOE, it would necessarily be a set of equations. He wrote, “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?”.

Phenomenological reality

On a much broader and more subjective level , private experiences, curiosity, inquiry, and the selectivity involved in personal interpretation of events shapes reality as seen by one and only one individual and hence is called phenomenological. While this form of reality might be common to others as well, it could at times also be so unique to oneself as to never be experienced or agreed upon by anyone else. Much of the kind of experience deemed spiritual occurs on this level of reality.

Phenomenology is a philosophical method developed in the early years of the twentieth century by Edmund Husserl and a circle of followers at the universities of Göttingen and Munich in Germany. Subsequently, phenomenological themes were taken up by philosophers in France, the United States, and elsewhere, often in contexts far removed from Husserl's work.

The word ''phenomenology'' comes from the Greek ''phainómenon'', meaning "that which appears", and ''lógos'', meaning "study". In Husserl's conception, phenomenology is primarily concerned with making the structures of consciousness, and the phenomena which appear in acts of consciousness, objects of systematic reflection and analysis. Such reflection was to take place from a highly modified "first person" viewpoint, studying phenomena not as they appear to "my" consciousness, but to any consciousness whatsoever. Husserl believed that phenomenology could thus provide a firm basis for all human knowledge, including scientific knowledge, and could establish philosophy as a "rigorous science".

Husserl's conception of phenomenology has been criticised and developed not only by himself, but also by his student and assistant Martin Heidegger, by existentialists, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, and by other philosophers, such as Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, and Dietrich von Hildebrand.

Skeptical hypotheses

Skeptical hypotheses in philosophy suggest that reality is very different from what we think it is; or at least that we cannot prove it is not. Examples include:-

The "Brain in a vat" hypothesis is cast in scientific terms. It supposes that one might be a disembodied brain kept alive in a vat, and fed false sensory signals, by a mad scientist.

The "Dream argument" of Descartes and Zhuangzi supposes reality to be indistinguishable from a dream.

Descarte's Evil demon is a being "as clever and deceitful as he is powerful, who has directed his entire effort to misleading me."

The five minute hypothesis (or omphalos hypothesis or Last Thursdayism) suggests that the world was created recently together with records and traces indicating a greater age.

The Matrix hypothesis or Simulated reality hypothesis suggest that we might be inside a computer simulation or virtual reality

Physical sciences

Scientific realism

Scientific realism is, at the most general level, the view that the world described by science (perhaps ideal science) is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be. Within philosophy of science, it is often framed as an answer to the question "how is the success of science to be explained?" The debate over what the success of science involves centers primarily on the status of unobservable entities apparently talked about by scientific theories. Generally, those who are scientific realists assert that one can make reliable claims about unobservables (viz., that they have the same ontological status) as observables, as opposed to instrumentalism.

Realism and locality in physics

''Realism'' in the sense used by physicists does not equate to realism in metaphysics. The latter is the claim that the world is in some sense mind-independent: that even if the results of a possible measurement do not pre-exist the act of measurement, that does not require that they are the creation of the observer (contrary to the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation of quantum mechanics). Furthermore, a mind-independent property does not have to be the value of some physical variable such as position or momentum. A property can be ''dispositional'' (or potential), i.e. it can be a tendency: in the way that glass objects tend to break, or are disposed to break, even if they do not ''actually'' break. Likewise, the mind-independent properties of quantum systems could consist of a tendency to respond to particular measurements with particular values with ascertainable probability. Such an ontology would be metaphysically realistic, without being realistic in the physicist's sense of "local realism" (which would require that a single value be produced with certainty).

A closely related term is counterfactual definiteness (CFD), used to refer to the claim that one can meaningfully speak of the definiteness of results of measurements that have not been performed (i.e. the ability to assume the existence of objects, and properties of objects, even when they have not been measured).

Local realism is a significant feature of classical mechanics, of general relativity, and of electrodynamics; but quantum mechanics largely rejects this principle due to the theory of distant quantum entanglements, an interpretation rejected by Einstein in the EPR paradox but subsequently apparently quantified by Bell's inequalities. Any theory, such as quantum mechanics, that violates Bell's inequalities must abandon ''either'' local realism ''or'' counterfactual definiteness; but some physicists dispute that experiments have demonstrated Bell's violations, on the grounds that the sub-class of inhomogeneous Bell inequalities has not been tested or due to experimental limitations in the tests. Different interpretations of quantum mechanics violate different parts of local realism and/or counterfactual definiteness.

Role of the observer in quantum mechanics

The quantum mind–body problem refers to the philosophical discussions of the mind–body problem in the context of quantum mechanics. Since quantum mechanics involves quantum superpositions, which are not perceived by observers, some interpretations of quantum mechanics place conscious observers in a special position.

The founders of quantum mechanics debated the role of the observer, and of them, Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg believed that it was the observer that produced collapse. This point of view, which was never fully endorsed by Niels Bohr, was denounced as mystical and anti-scientific by Albert Einstein. Pauli accepted the term, and described quantum mechanics as ''lucid mysticism''.

Heisenberg and Bohr always described quantum mechanics in logical positivist terms. Bohr also took an active interest in the philosophical implications of quantum theories such as his complementarity, for example. He believed quantum theory offers a complete description of nature, albeit one that is simply ill suited for everyday experiences - which are better described by classical mechanics and probability. Bohr never specified a demarcation line above which objects cease to be quantum and become classical. He believed that it was not a question of physics, but one of philosophy.

Eugene Wigner reformulated the "Schrödinger's cat" thought experiment as "Wigner's friend" and proposed that the consciousness of an observer is the demarcation line which precipitates collapse of the wave function, independent of any realist interpretation. Commonly known as "''consciousness causes collapse''", this interpretation of quantum mechanics states that observation by a conscious observer is what makes the wave function collapse.

The multiverse

The multiverse is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including the historical universe we consistently experience) that together comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, and energy as well as the physical laws and constants that describe them. The term was coined in 1895 by the American philosopher and psychologist William James. The various universes within the multiverse are sometimes called parallel universes.

The structure of the multiverse, the nature of each universe within it and the relationship between the various constituent universes, depend on the specific multiverse hypothesis considered. Multiverses have been hypothesized in cosmology, physics, astronomy, religion, philosophy, transpersonal psychology and fiction, particularly in science fiction and fantasy. In these contexts, parallel universes are also called "alternative universes", "quantum universes", "interpenetrating dimensions", "parallel dimensions", "parallel worlds", "alternative realities", "alternative timelines", and "dimensional planes," among others.

Scientific theories of everything

A theory of everything (TOE) is a putative theory of theoretical physics that fully explains and links together all known physical phenomena, and predicts the outcome of ''any'' experiment that could be carried out ''in principle'' and is not related to math in anyway.

The theory of everything is also called the final theory. Many candidate theories of everything have been proposed by theoretical physicists during the twentieth century, but none have been confirmed experimentally. The primary problem in producing a TOE is that general relativity and quantum mechanics are hard to unify. This is one of the unsolved problems in physics.

Initially, the term 'theory of everything' was used with an ironic connotation to refer to various overgeneralized theories. For example, a great-grandfather of Ijon Tichy—a character from a cycle of Stanisław Lem's science fiction stories of the 1960s—was known to work on the "General Theory of Everything". Physicist John Ellis claims to have introduced the term into the technical literature in an article in ''Nature'' in 1986. Over time, the term stuck in popularizations of quantum physics to describe a theory that would unify or explain through a single model the theories of all fundamental interactions and of all particles of nature: general relativity for gravitation, and the standard model of elementary particle physics — which includes quantum mechanics — for electromagnetism, the two nuclear interactions, and the known elementary particles.

Current candidates for a theory of everything include string theory, M theory, and loop quantum gravity.

See also

Absolute (philosophy)

Advaita

Allegory of the Cave

Authenticity

Roland Barthes

Consensus reality

Cyberspace

Delusion

Determinism

Derealization

Phillip K. Dick

Dissociation

Dream

Dreamtime (religion)

Dreamworld

Emanationism

Empiricism

Existence

Explanatory model

False awakening

Fiction

Fictionalism

Imagination

Hallucination

Hyperreality

Illusion

Jorge Luis Borges

Map and territory

Marshall McLuhan

The Matrix

Maya (illusion)

Nihilism

Noumenon

Nagarjuna

Ontology

Phenomenon

Principle of locality

Psychosis

Rashomon (film)

Real life (reality)

Real world

Reality in Buddhism

Reality shifts (mysticism)

Reality-based community (politics)

Reality TV

Red pill

Reification (disambiguation)

Semiotics

Simulacrum

Simulated reality

Skepticism

Social constructionism

Solipsism

Sunyata

Surrealism

Vanilla Sky

The Truman Show

Thoughtform

The Usual Suspects

Virtual reality

Waking Life (film)

Zhuangzi

References

External links

C.D. Broad on Reality

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Realism

Video: Carl Sagan on the 4th Dimension Explanation

Video: Animated version of the above with Dr Quantum - Flatland

Phenomenology Online: Materials discussing and exemplifying phenomenological research

Concept and Reality, a Meditatiion Perspective

The Illusion of Reality by Jim AL-Khalili

The Matrix as Metaphysics by David Chalmers

The Universes of Max Tegmark

Category:Philosophical terminology Category:Core issues in ethics Category:Ontology

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name	Christopher Pirillo
nick names	lockergnome, ^gnome^, chris
birth date	July 26, 1973
birth place	Des Moines, Iowa
occupation	YouTube Partner, Magazine columnist, tech expert for CNN.com, book author, conference organizer, public speaker, owner of a blogging network, runs a social community, provider of video content, Board of directors, Ustream.tv
net income	8.5 Million (USD)
website	http://chris.pirillo.com (Personal Blog) }}

Christopher Joseph Pirillo (born July 26, 1973) is the founder and maintainer of Lockergnome, which is a network of blogs, web forums, mailing lists, and online communities. He spent two years hosting the TechTV television program ''Call for Help'', where he also hosted the first annual Call-for-Help-a-Thon. He now hosts videos on several Internet sites, including CNN, YouTube, ustream.tv, CBC and his own website.

Biography

Pirillo was born on July 26, 1973 in Des Moines, Iowa. He studied at the University of Northern Iowa, where he majored in English education. For a short time, he was a 7th grade English student teacher at Coke R. Stevenson Middle School in San Antonio, Texas. He currently lives in Seattle, Washington with his two dogs, Wicket and Pixie, after whom the bots on his IRC chat room are named. Pirillo streams video of his office live and has a large community of dedicated supporters that watch his frequently recorded videos on various tech-based and non-tech-based topics.

Projects

Since 2001, Pirillo has hosted Gnomedex, which is a yearly conference covering art, science, social media, blogs, and new and emerging technologies and concepts, such as Web 2.0. Gnomedex 10 was held in August 2010 in Seattle, Washington.

Pirillo streams video live 24/7 from his home office on Ustream, and his stream at live.pirillo.com is one of the more popular, with over 5,000 regular watchers. His streams, also broadcast on YouTube, focus on software, hardware, review, computers, iPhone applications, operating systems, gaming, and other technology-related topics and events. , Pirillo has had over 100,000,000 views. , he reached over 180k subscribers on his YouTube channel.

In January 2010, Chris began hosting "Help Desk with Chris Pirillo", a weekly live video call-in show on Microsoft's Channel 9 web site. At the moment, the show is only starting with the pilot, and its activity is pending on the success of that pilot.

Pirillo runs several online communities. His ''Lockergnome'' blogging network has over 100,000 members. ''Geeks'', his Ning-based social network, has over 24,000 users.

''Lockergnome'' originally started as a technology mailing list in 1996, offering tricks and tips for operating systems and applications, software suggestions (with an emphasis on public domain and shareware software), and web site recommendations. Several mailing lists are now provided, offering technology Advice and Tips and other content syndicated from ''Lockergnome''s blogs and web forums, including IT Professionals and problem solvers.

Chris Pirillo is the author of several books, including ''Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing'', ''Online! The Book'' with John C. Dvorak and Wendy Taylor, and several ebooks.

References

External links

Chris Pirillo's official blog

Lockergnome.com

Category:1973 births Category:Living people Category:American bloggers Category:American Internet personalities Category:American non-fiction writers Category:American people of Italian descent Category:People from Des Moines, Iowa Category:People from Seattle, Washington Category:TechTV Category:University of Northern Iowa alumni

no:Chris Pirillo ro:Chris Pirillo sv:Chris Pirillo

Bob Arno, (born in Stockholm, Sweden) is known primarily as a comedy pickpocket entertainer and more recently as a criminologist specializing in global street crime. He became a U.S. citizen in 1992.

Career

Arno's stage pickpocket performance is billed as comedy, though it includes some decidedly unfunny moments which, nevertheless, fascinate and impress audience members. First among these is his incorporation of documentary-style video which is projected during his presentation. As described in a March 9, 2004 article in ''The New York Times,'' the video is footage shot by himself and his wife, Bambi Vincent, of criminal pickpockets and other street thieves before, during, and after committing their crimes. This "reality factor" contributes greatly to the presentation's originality and adds elements of awe and enlightenment that give it depth beyond comedy.

Unlike most other performers in the small, specialized field of pickpocket entertainment, Arno does not present magical effects for their own sake. He does incorporate principles of magic in much the same manner that criminal pickpockets, con artists, and other street thieves do. And, given that his show is comedy, he is not above preparing a volunteer on occasion to enhance his humorous finale. Regardless, Arno's thievery skills are legendary. Blue Moon Talent Agency says "Nothing a victim possesses is safe from Bob Arno's lightning lifts." He has perfected the art of the steal to include neckties, suspenders, glasses, belts, cell phones, wallets, and pocket contents, as well as watches.

In 1993, looking to expand the show, Arno and his wife wondered if they could bring elements from the street to the stage. They began a serious study of street criminals, filming them in the act of tricking and/or stealing from victims, and interviewing them when possible. "Wearing hidden camera and recording equipment, they do everything they can to put themselves in the thick of the action," according to ''Las Vegas Review Journal''. Arno and Vincent began calling themselves "thief-hunters" and soon amassed a valuable film archive of a little-documented crime.

In the preface of their book (see below), Arno and Vincent claim to have initially suffered inner turmoil created by failing to prevent incidents occurring in their presence, but they overcame that discomfort after realizing the value of their study. Certainly they were able to port street techniques to the stage, as originally hoped. But the video footage and interviews garnered interest from law enforcement and security agencies, while the video mixed with anecdotes and lessons became a popular lecture to laymen.

Thus began Arno's career as a criminologist and speaker. His study had begun much earlier with observations of soldiers on R&R leave in Asia during the 60s. On May 11, 1969, a front page profile written by Brian Moynahan in the London ''Sunday Times'' called Arno "one of the world's pickpocketing experts." In the four-column article Arno describes theft risks peculiar to various Asian countries and compares victim reaction by nationality. In its June 20, 1969 issue, Time magazine wrote: "One of the world's foremost experts in the techniques of first-rank 'wires' (or 'cannons' or 'pit workers') is Bob Arno, a 29-year-old Swede whose demonstrations onstage and in nightclubs earn him more than $100,000 a year." In a January 9, 1981 article entitled "Beware the Stiff-Armed Stranger; He May be Lifting Your Wallet," ''The Wall Street Journal'' quoted "Robert [sic] Arno, a Miami, Fla., pickpocketing expert who's advised police in various countries."

In 1993, armed with video cameras to document his findings, Arno revived his research in earnest. His knowledge base started with common and specialized forms of street thievery, and later grew to include off-the-street theft from tourists. His expertise now includes behavior profiling, identity theft, laptop theft, credit card fraud and internet scams. He lectures to corporate and lay audiences and presents training for law enforcement and security, and other government agencies in the United States and abroad. Promenade Speakers Bureau calls Arno's presentations "a tad provocative," and says they include “pattern recognition” and “body language profiling."

With Vincent, Arno is co-author of the book ''Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams'' (Bonus Books, 2003).

The feature article “Thieves Among Us” in the April 2005 issue of ''National Geographic Traveler'' documents several of Arno’s “unorthodox surveillance tactics.” Arno walked into the picturesque but crime-ridden Spanish Quarter of Naples, Italy, to see how long it would take for his (fake) Rolex to be stolen by scooter-riding bandits. By alleging to be a pickpocket, he establishes a rapport with street thieves, which has resulted in at least one offer to join an organized crime ring at US$1,000/day for himself and Vincent.

History

At age 15, Arno began performing magic at youth centers in his native Sweden and was successful enough to tour the country for several years. He briefly experimented with hypnotism before settling on pickpocketing, having been inspired by "Dominique" Risbourg, the reigning pickpocket performer of the time. When Dominique had an extended run in Stockholm in 1956, he solicited the local Magic Circle for an assistant, and Arno volunteered.

From age 20 to 23, Arno toured Asia with his pickpocket show, working nightclubs and U.S. military bases. From 23 to 25 he toured across Europe working nightclubs and theaters. At 25 he worked for two months at the Latin Quarter (nightclub) in New York, which began his career in America. He worked steadily from then on, mostly in casino revues, moving from Atlantic City to the Caribbean to Canada to Las Vegas. In 1992, after many years in Las Vegas and three years (1990–1992) in the ''Jubilee!'' show at Bally's Casino there, he quit his casino revue career in order to travel with his wife. Cruise ships served a triple purpose in the 90s: a steady income as a performing venue; exotic world travel; and putting Arno in the middle of huge tourist crowds, which is generally where pickpockets operate. These crowds, primarily in the great cities of Europe, but also in Asia, Africa, and South America, were the inspiration for Arno's criminal pickpocket research. The study soon became the motivation for further cruise ship engagements.

The 90s also saw Arno in theater productions. He starred in his own show with Swedish comedian John Houdi at Berns Salonger in Stockholm, performed at the Lido in Amsterdam, at Liseberg and Gröna Lund in Sweden, at theaters in Sydney, and at Sun City, North West. He also began performing at private corporate events, which is currently his main focus along with keynote speaking and law enforcement training.

In 2008 he toured as part of a stage show called ''Hoodwinked'' with Banachek, Todd Robbins and Richard Turner.

He was featured in the Just for Laughs Comedy Tour of 2010, along with Jeremy Hotz, Robert Kelly, Ryan Hamilton, and Gina Yashere.

Books

''Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams'' (Bonus Books, 2003), by Bambi Vincent and Bob Arno. ISBN 1-56625-198-2

''Scam-Proof Your Life: 377 Smart Ways to Protect You & Your Family from Ripoffs, Bogus Deals & Other Consumer Headaches'' (Sterling, 2006), by Sid Kirchheimer. (Bob Arno is a contributor) ISBN 1-4027-3041-1

Television

Arno has appeared on numerous television shows in the United States and abroad. Between 1972 and 1975, he had several of his own one-hour specials on the TROS network in Holland. On ''Late Night with David Letterman'' (December 1983) he stole Letterman's tie and heirloom watch. He was on HBO's ''Just for Laughs'' in 1989, and several times on ABC's ''20/20'' (November 3, 2000, June 22, 2001, July 30, 2004). He appeared in two of ITV's (UK) London Weekend Television series: ''Beware: Pickpockets'' (June 2000), and ''Beware: Street Thieves'' (July 2001), and in the BBC's ''History of Magic'' (2004). He made the Travel Channel's endlessly repeated ''Travel Scams & Rip--offs Revealed-Las Vegas'' as well as ''Las Vegas Caught on Tape'' and appeared as "the fastest fingers" on ''Ripley's Believe it or Not''. His 1996 appearance on World's Greatest Magic III revived interest in theatrical pickpocketing.

Arno's foreign television credits are many, including appearances in Germany, Sweden, South Africa, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Canada, Brazil, and United Kingdom.

References

External links

Bob Arno's official website

Thiefhunters in Paradise, Bambi Vincent & Bob Arno's blog

''Fortune'' magazine, 10/30/06

''Kiplinger's Personal Finance'' magazine, 11/06

''The New York Times,'' 3/9/04

CNN/fn, 7/14/05

ABC ''20/20'' “Bob Arno’s anti-theft tips”

CBS ''The Early Show,'' 4/21/04

National Public Radio, ''Weekend Edition Saturday,'' 7/11/04

Tasmanian radio

''Carte Blanche,'' South Africa

NBC Dateline (video), 9/3/07

Bob Arno in action (video)

Bob Arno on Mumbai television, 3/2/10

Category:Living people Category:Criminologists Category:American people of Swedish descent Category:Swedish comedians Category:American comedians