[Below you’ll find first a short description of the new VRoxy (VR-driven robotic proxy) telepresence system being developed by teams at Cornell and Brown Universities, and then a more detailed description of how the system works. The first story is from New Atlas (based on a report from Cornell), and the second is from Brown University (where the original version includes three different pictures and a five-minute demonstration video that’s also available on YouTube). As Cornell’s coverage notes, VRoxy is a refined version of ReMotion, which was featured in a May 2023 ISPR Presence News post. –Matthew] [Image: Screenshot of…

[I was anxious about donating blood and never did so, until I was diagnosed with the rare chronic blood cancer Polycythemia Vera, which required me to regularly go through the same procedure (a phlebotomy). So I’m particularly interested in two new applications of presence-evoking technology being used to reduce anxiety, educate, and persuade people about giving blood. The first application, described in the story from Fierce Pharma below, involves using mixed-reality headsets during donations. See coverage from KWQC in Davenport, Iowa for more details and a 1:50 minute news report, and an ImpactLife press release for a 1:00 minute video…

[Despite the headline of this New York Times story, increasingly convincing and accessible generative AI makes the depressing confusion about the role of technology in images related to the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas wars predictable and unsurprising. Two particularly distressing comments come at the end of the story: an executive at the cybersecurity firm Sophos says, “Proving what’s fake is going to be a pointless endeavor,” and the director of the Poynter media literacy program MediaWise says, “People will believe anything that confirms their beliefs or makes them emotional… It doesn’t matter how good it is, or how novel it looks,…