[This example and link-filled story from Time describes both the advantages and challenges, for both brands and consumers, of incorporating augmented reality and the presence it evokes into the shopping experience. As always, making the technology simple, easy and intuitive to use is key. See the original story for a second image. –Matthew]

[Image: Screenshots of Nike’s AR shopping lens on Snapchat. Credit: Snapchat]

Augmented Reality is the Future of Online Shopping

By Megan Mccluskey
January 28, 2022

When you open up Snapchat’s lens carousel, you’re greeted with a variety of filters that let you do everything from smoothing your skin to wearing a flower crown to dancing with a hotdog. Snapchat lenses have for years helped users create funny or glam photos and videos to send to their friends, but recently a more practical category of lens has been on the rise: augmented reality (AR) shopping.… read more. “Augmented reality is the future of online shopping”

[Normally I’d post this to the ISPR Presence Community on Facebook, but it’s a particularly vivid example of medium-as-social-actor presence. Note the anthropomorphic language in the Digital Trends report on a routine malfunction of a Roomba vacuum cleaner. Other coverage is similar, including in PennLive where the story begins this way: “A robot vacuum cleaner made a jailbreak and escaped from a British hotel the other day. Evidently fed up with its life of forced servitude, the vacuum broke out of the hotel…” The review of available models at the link at the end of the story below defines “robot vacs” as “sentient, disc-shaped floor-dwellers that you can program to sweep through the most common areas of your home, removing dirt, dust, pet food, and all other types of debris.” –Matthew]

[Image: The robot vacuum had enough of cleaning the lobby and made its bid for freedom from the hotel, which is next to the A14.… read more. “MASA Presence: Roomba attempts great escape from budget hotel”

[This CNN story provides an example-filled update on how virtual reality is being incorporated into education from K-12 to college, and some of the costs, benefits, challenges and limitations involved. See the original story for two more images. –Matthew]

[Image: A screenshot of Stanford students participating in a discussion on Zoom while working together collaboratively as avatars in VR.]

Forget Zoom school. For some students, class is in session in VR

By Rachel Metz, CNN Business
January 27, 2022

Jeremy Bailenson has studied virtual reality for decades. But it wasn’t until last year that the Stanford professor felt the technology was good enough that he could actually teach a class in VR.

Over the summer and again in the fall, Bailenson, the founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, taught more than 260 students in his “Virtual People” class, which explores various aspects of virtual reality.… read more. “Forget Zoom school. For some students, class is in session in VR”

[The philosophical debate about the possibility that we’re living in a fully convincing presence-inducing simulation is fascinating even if just as an example of how simulation has become the latest metaphor for how we (try to) understand the mysteries of our world and lives. But the last few paragraphs of this essay from The New York Times raise a disturbing, less abstract. and more practical implication that I think should serve as a key motivation for presence scholarship. For more insights on this topic see two other recent articles: “Does it matter if you’re in the matrix?” in Prospect Magazine, which contrasts the views of philosopher David Chalmers and the philosophical position in the new Matrix film, and a New York Times interview with Chalmers. –Matthew]

[Image: Credit: The New York Times, d3sign/Getty Images]

We Might Be in a Simulation.… read more. “We might be in a simulation. How much should that worry us?”

[A new documentary film that presents the stories of real people in the virtual environments of VRChat is getting positive reviews, including the one below from Engadget. See the original version for a second image and a 3:03 minute “Meet the Artist” video (also available on YouTube). The review in Little White Lies concludes with this:

“Many have pondered in the physical world about the net results of Zuckerberg’s intent with his metaverse, and it’s inevitable the viewer will come away from an experience like this wondering the same. How exactly will we communicate in the future? Are long-distance exchanges particularly enriched and made all-the-more possible via social VR? Is it essentially a safe place to escape for a more complete feeling of self-expression? Does it run the risk of allowing ourselves to be too self-indulgent for our own good?… read more. “‘We Met in Virtual Reality’ VRChat documentary finds love in the metaverse”

[A clever use of technology from virtual reality and video games translates stereoscopic visual information into haptic input to let people who are visually impaired more fully perceive and interact with their environment. The story below from Interesting Engineering provides details. Coverage in Futurism adds this:

“Zahn and Khan’s paper frequently use Microsoft’s Kinect, a motion-detection system that adds additional features to Xbox games, as a point of reference. Both are confident their camera and setup will be smaller, less conspicuous and cheaper to build than a Kinect.

It’s an intriguing idea for people with low vision. Some rely on apps where volunteers describe the item they’re holding, and some apps give a general description of items in the room. But the effectiveness of this new headset combined with the fact that it doesn’t use headphones or block out other senses makes it sound pretty sweet.”… read more. “A new 3d-printed system lets blind people ‘see’ obstacles via vibrations”