[From The Verge, where the story includes an additional image]

Inside High Fidelity, the virtual reality successor to ‘Second Life’

A crude hint of how physical connection could invade the online world

By Adi Robertson on May 19, 2014

As virtual reality gains steam, the question of virtual worlds is never far behind. Philip Rosedale is best known for online community Second Life. But since last year, we’ve been watching for news on High Fidelity, a new project meant to blend his previous work with cutting-edge telepresence technology. The system, announced in 2013, was compared to the OASIS of Ready Player One: a series of worlds connected to each other by a central network and economy, provided — obviously — by Rosedale himself. At the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference in Mountain View, we’re seeing the first hints of what that could mean, as well as a sense of the many hurdles left to jump.… read more. “Inside High Fidelity, the virtual reality successor to Second Life”

[From MIT Technology Review; see today’s second post for an update on and analysis of the Second Life founder’s High Fidelity project. –Matthew ]

Why Virtual Reality Will Compete with the Real World

Hardware like the headset made by Oculus VR will allow virtual worlds to offer person-to-person interactions that compete with real life.

Philip Rosedale
May 5, 2014

Recent weeks have been good ones for people interested in virtual reality. The Facebook acquisition of Oculus has galvanized the idea that “something wonderful” will happen if we put on these strange headsets and visually enter other worlds. Of course, most people assume this means gaming.

And it’s true that the upcoming Crystal Cove Oculus headset (which tracks the head’s position and rotation) will immerse its users in the most amazing computer gaming experiences they could have ever thought possible. But that’s not the big part of the story.… read more. “Second Life founder: Why virtual reality will compete with the real world”

[From CNN, where the story includes a 1 minute video report and screenshots of several tweets; see the full performance on YouTube; more notable coverage includes:

• “Sorry everyone, but Michael Jackson is dead” (Technology Tell)
• “Lionel Richie: Michael Jackson hologram was ‘freaky’ (Xpose)
• “Holograms: How to give your brand the Michael Jackson effect” (MediaWeek)
• “Decoding Holograms: 100 Narendra Modis, 1 Michael Jackson Alive on Stage in 2014” (a collection of videos/links for other posthumous hologram creations) (iDIVA)

–Matthew ]

Michael Jackson’s hologram: Creepy or cool?

By Lisa Respers France, CNN
Mon May 19, 2014

(CNN) — The King of Pop is back in the spotlight — and not everybody is happy about it.

Despite the well of affection for the late Michael Jackson, his “return” in the form of a hologram at Sunday night’s Billboard Music Awards didn’t meet with unanimous approval.… read more. “Michael Jackson’s hologram: Creepy or cool?”

[From Fast Company’s Co.Design, where the story includes a photo gallery and a 1:03 minute video]

MIT iPhone App Makes You Intimate With A Stranger

Over 20 days, MIT’s new app gives you a peek into someone’s life. Caveat: You never speak.

Mark Wilson
May 8, 2014

20 Day Stranger, an iPhone app by MIT Media Lab’s Playful Systems group, wants to burst the sociographic bubble of our “friend” network.

Our social media world, after all, is highly curated–it’s filled with people just like us. This app, very thoughtfully, hopes to change that. For 20 days, the app pairs you with a stranger who lives as far across the globe as possible. Over that time, you’ll receive countless intimate details about the person’s life–when the person wakes, where the person goes–except for one big piece of the puzzle.… read more. “MIT App makes you intimate with a stranger”

[From The New York Times]

[Image: Tim Lahan]

Psst. Look Over Here.

By Kate Murphy   May 16, 2014

Look inside your kitchen cabinet and odds are you have a collection of old friends gazing back at you — the Quaker Oats man, the Sun-Maid girl, Aunt Jemima and maybe a Keebler elf or two. The reason they are there may have more do with your subconscious craving for eye contact than the taste of the products.

In a study published last month in the journal Environment and Behavior, researchers at Cornell University manipulated the gaze of the cartoon rabbit on Trix cereal boxes and found that adult subjects were more likely to choose Trix over competing brands if the rabbit was looking at them rather than away. In a creepy corollary, the researchers found that the eyes of characters on boxes of cereal marketed to kids were directed downward, and can meet the upward gaze of children in grocery store aisles.… read more. “On the importance of eye contact”

[From the Ames Tribune; the Second Livestock web site is here; a 0:55 minute video is here]

ISU design professor envisions virtual reality lives for farm animals

By Gavin Aronsen, Staff Writer
Posted May 10, 2014 – Updated May 13, 2014

Could chickens raised in close confinement live more humane lives if they experienced them virtually?

That’s a question posed by Austin Stewart, an assistant professor in Iowa State University’s College of Design, for his latest project. He calls it Second Livestock — a takeoff on the popular online virtual world Second Life.

The idea goes something like this: Chickens, too numerous in the United States to realistically all live free-range lives, could be raised in cages more humanely if, from a young age, they stood on omni-directional treadmills and wore virtual reality headsets displaying three-dimensional worlds mapped to their feed and scratch, mimicking a free-range existence.… read more. “Design professor envisions virtual reality lives for farm animals”