[Even without the startling prediction that “by the year 2021, there will be more Alexa-like digital assistants on the planet than humans” the responses to and uses of Amazon’s product described in this story from The New York Times are fascinating examples of medium-as-social-actor presence. It also contains interesting analyses of the reasons for these responses. The original version of the story includes more images. –Matthew]

[Image: By Sergio Baradat]

‘Alexa, Where Have You Been All My Life?’

Siri is so five years ago: How a sleek, smooth-talking cylinder from Amazon stole our hearts, bamboozled our spouses and enchanted our children.

By Penelope Green
July 11, 2017

The other day, a newly single friend confessed that lately she had found herself not just chatting up Alexa, Amazon’s crisp-voiced domestic bot, but also looking forward to her responses. “That’s a road,” she said darkly, “you don’t want to be heading down.”… read more. “The many ways Alexa is creating medium-as-social-actor presence experiences”

[The new film Dunkirk in full IMAX format promises to create compelling presence experiences. This short story from The Verge includes the 4 minute “Behind the Frame” featurette. A detailed story in the Los Angeles Times includes this:

“[A]s Nolan sees it, ‘Dunkirk’ is not a war movie per se but rather a kind of Hitchcockian suspense thriller, and his goal for the picture, which he filmed almost entirely in IMAX, is to create an immersive white-knuckle ride that puts the viewer in the shoes of soldiers fighting for survival. ‘We’re trying to create an experience that I talk about as being like virtual reality without the goggles,’ he said. ‘I think what’s exciting about movies right now, as opposed to television or novels or the stage, is the cinema of experience, where you’re sitting in a room with a lot of different people and you’re being taken to a world you’d never normally travel to.’”… read more. “Director Christopher Nolan says Dunkirk in IMAX is like ‘virtual reality without the goggles’”

[This story from Stanford Medicine is about the powerful benefits of using data from brain scans to create presence experiences for neurology patients and surgeons. –Matthew]

[Image: The virtual reality system is helping train residents, assist surgeons in planning upcoming operations and educate patients. It also helps surgeons in the operating room, guiding them in a three-dimensional space. Credit: Paul Sakuma]

Virtual reality system helps surgeons, reassures patients

Stanford Medicine is using a new software system that combines imaging from MRIs, CT scans and angiograms to create a three-dimensional model that physicians and patients can see and manipulate — just like a virtual reality game.

July 11, 2017
By Mandy Erickson
Mandy Erickson is a freelance writer and editor.

Having undergone two aneurysm surgeries, Sandi Rodoni thought she understood everything about the procedure. But when it came time for her third surgery, the Watsonville, California, resident was treated to a virtual reality trip inside her own brain.… read more. “Stanford Medicine using VR of patient brains to help surgeons, reassure patients”

[This story from The Register describes a research program that involves the use of spatial presence via VR to develop ethical guidelines for the behavior of self-driving cars that evoke medium-as-social-actor presence; note the conclusion in the last paragraph that how the cars make these life-and-death choices needs to be transparent for consumers to accept the new technology. –Matthew]

New work: Algorithms to give self-driving cars ‘impulsive’ human ‘ethics’

It’s just preliminary research, don’t freak out

By Andrew Silver
5 July 2017

In a version of the infamous Trolley Problem, you’re sitting in a runaway train on a fatal collision course with five people. You can flip a switch to change tracks, but on the other track you’d still kill one person.

Now change the numbers, who the people are, pretend the trolley drives itself, and welcome to the crazy world of the ethics of self-driving vehicles.… read more. “Researchers use VR to give self-driving cars human ethics”

[The technology described in this story from The Economist represents a dark side of presence illusions, a tool to support the increasingly blatant and shameless promotion of false claims about facts and events. On the positive side, the story notes several ways of countering the danger. –Matthew]

Fake news: you ain’t seen nothing yet

Generating convincing audio and video of fake events

Print edition | Science and technology
July 1st 2017

Earlier this year Françoise Hardy, a French musician, appeared in a YouTube video (see link). She is asked, by a presenter off-screen, why President Donald Trump sent his press secretary, Sean Spicer, to lie about the size of the inauguration crowd. First, Ms Hardy argues. Then she says Mr Spicer “gave alternative facts to that”. It’s all a little odd, not least because Françoise Hardy (pictured), who is now 73, looks only 20, and the voice coming out of her mouth belongs to Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to Mr Trump.… read more. “Fake news evolves: Algorithms that generate convincing audio-video of fake events”