Month: October 2025


  • Call: “Chatbots: Help Some/Harm Others. Might Destroy Humanity” – Free online lecture

    Call for Participation: “Chatbots: Help Some/Harm Others. Might Destroy Humanity”A free online lecture by Allen J. Frances (Duke University School of Medicine, USA)November 25, 2025 at 17:00 CET (8:00 PST)https://listserv.liv.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa?A2=index&L=PHILOS-L&O=D&P=112304712 The registration for the second lecture of the Institute of Applied Psychology Interdisciplinary Series – see: https://ips.uj.edu.pl/nauka/iapis/iapis_en – (Season 7) is open. We will be hosting Allen Frances (Duke University School of Medicine, USA) with a talk titled: “Chatbots: Help Some/Harm Others. Might Destroy Humanity.” REGISTRATION: Please feel welcome to register using this link:https://forms.gle/xhrRgQ6vfQRgQhcR7 ABSTRACT: Chatbots are the most consequential invention in human history. They have a wonderful potential to…

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  • Samsung’s Galaxy XR transforms AI into an embodied being

    [As this essay from SamMobile notes, right now artificial intelligence exists mainly in “apps and browser windows,” but the new Samsung Galaxy XR headset and others like it “move AI from its current state into an embodied, spatial and truly interactive being.” As the author writes, this new (medium-as-social-actor presence-evoking) capability will create both benefits and dangers. –Matthew] Galaxy XR’s biggest breakthrough isn’t what you might think, here’s why It’s where you meet AI halfway. By Adnan FarooquiOctober 27, 2025 There’s been a lot of excitement for Samsung’s first extended reality headset. It was launched as the Galaxy XR last…

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  • Call: Tech Abuse Conference

    Call for Papers and Contributions: Tech Abuse ConferenceMay 19-21, 2026Londonhttps://www.genderandtech.net/conference Deadline for submission of abstracts: October 31, 2025 Dear All, I’m reaching out to share the Call for Papers and Contributions for our upcoming Tech Abuse Conference, taking place 19-21 May 2026 in London:https://www.genderandtech.net/conference. Together with my team at the UCL Gender and Tech Research Lab, we’re working to convene a diverse, global community committed to understanding and addressing technology-facilitated gender-based violence and abuse. This includes not only academics, but also practitioners, survivors and survivor-led organisations, policymakers, technologists, legal experts, educators, journalists, NGOs, law enforcement, industry professionals, activists, and many…

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  • Virtual reality in medical education: Can empathy become a simulation?

    [This link-filled essay from Bioethics Today, the website for the American Journal of Bioethics, raises some thought-provoking and important concerns about the use and impact of (presence-evoking) simulations in medical education. –Matthew] Virtual Reality in Medical Education: Can Empathy Become a Simulation? By Hana Abbasian, MS, a Research Assistant at Harvard Medical School and Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)October 28, 2025 Medical education has always relied on simulators. From wooden mannequins in the 17th century to the digital cadavers of today, physicians have long used different tools to practice care without consequence. But virtual reality (VR) changes the…

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  • Call: Online Conference: Media Technologies and Future Storytelling

    Call for Papers: Online Conference: Media Technologies and Future StorytellingDecember 16, 2025http://commlist.org/archive/calls/2025-all/msg00936.html Deadline for submission of abstracts: November 14, 2025 We are pleased to announce an online one day conference exploring the evolution of storytelling in the wake of advancements in media technologies. This event will investigate how emerging technologies are reshaping the way we tell, preserve, and reimagine our stories. We live in a world where stories are not just read and watched but physically felt through technologies like (VR/AR/XR). As technologies like VR, AR, and XR make the user’s body an integral part of the narrative, we must…

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  • New presence experience ‘Interstellar Arc’ might be Las Vegas’ most imaginative

    [The selection of rich presence experiences in Las Vegas continues to grow with Interstellar Arc, as described in this story from the Las Vegas Review-Journal; see the original version of the story (or YouTube) for a 30 second trailer. Coverage in Travel Weekly adds that the new attraction “is part of Area15’s expansion, which includes Universal Horror Unleashed and other attractions to open soon.” That story also includes this quote from co-creator Félix Lajeunesse: “Some of our early participants have described the experience as ‘visually beautiful and surreal.’ One even described the moment of waking from cryosleep as ‘a shockingly…

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  • Call: Amplification & Everyday Life Conference

    Call for Papers: Amplification & Everyday Life ConferenceJune 4-5, 2026University of HuddersfieldHuddersfield, West Yorkshire, UKhttps://makeitlouder.co.uk/2025/10/23/call-for-papers-amplification-and-everyday-life/ Deadline for submissions: December 15, 2025 We are delighted to invite proposals for a two-day conference dedicated to Amplification and Everyday Life, taking place June 4-5, 2026, at the University of Huddersfield, UK. The Amplification Project, a Leverhulme Trust-funded research project housed within the Music and Music Technology division of the University of Huddersfield, invites proposals on the theme of “Amplification and Everyday Life.” As the first large-scale research project dedicated to the study of amplification, we hope this conference will help to identify and…

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  • How VR (and presence) is helping people see the life-saving power of vaccines

    [The report from Positive News below describes the expanding use of virtual reality to help people understand the difficulty and necessity of distributing life-saving vaccinations around the world. In addition to several indirect references, the CEO of REM5 STUDIOS says “It’s about presence… You can read about the polio eradication effort, or watch a video – but in VR, you feel it. You’re right there beside the people doing the work.” See the original version of the story for four more images, and for more context see a July 2022 post in ISPR Presence News. –Matthew] How virtual reality is…

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  • Call: Human-Machine Communication (HMC) Syllabi Project

    Call for Syllabi: The Human-Machine Communication (HMC) Syllabi Projecthttps://andrealguzman.net/hmcsyllabusproject Communication and media research is expanding to include artificial intelligence and robotics, and this broadening of the study of communication also has extended to the classroom. Scholars who are integrating AI and/or Social Robotics into their courses are invited to participate in the Human-Machine Communication Syllabus Project by Andrea L. Guzman, Northern Illinois University, and Jason Archer, Michigan Technological University. The purpose of the project is two-fold: First, we aim to study how scholars are conceptualizing artificial intelligence, social robotics, and/or related technologies and incorporating them as subjects of study and…

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  • Scientists develop retina E-paper display with 25k pixels per inch, matching human vision

    [This story from AOL describes a research breakthrough with the potential to enable more convincing and compelling presence experiences evoked by visual display screens, particularly the small screens used in virtual and augmented reality. See the original version of the story for five different images, and for more information see the Chalmers University news release and coverage in New Atlas, as well as the researchers’ article in Nature. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: DALL-E AI. Source: New Atlas] Scientists develop retina E-paper display with 25k pixels per inch, matching human vision By Shy CohenOctober 23, 2025 Scientists in Sweden have created a…

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  • Call: The sleep of digital reason? Dreaming of a creative machine in the age of AI – issue of Caleidoscopio

    Call for Papers: The sleep of digital reason? Dreaming of a creative machine in the age of AISpecial issue of Caleidoscopio – Revista de Comunicação e Cultura, the journal of the Communication Sciences Department of ECATI, Lusófona University (Vol. 1 No. 2)https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/caleidoscopio/announcement/view/245 Issue editors: José Gomes Pinto (Lusófona University) and Alexander Gerner (Lusófona University) Deadline for submissions: January 5, 2026 When Francisco Goya etched “El sueño de la razón produce monstruos” (1799), he warned that reason’s slumber is far from being ordered and predictable. But what is the folly and ignorance today that dreams about algorithmic rationalities and creative machines?…

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  • Alan Hamel creates AI clone of late wife Suzanne Somers 2 years after her death: ‘You can’t tell the difference’

    [A new example of the emotionally and ethically fraught notion of creating artificially intelligent digital versions of people who have died is in the news. This story from People is widely quoted in other coverage; see the original version for four more images. For more about Suzanne Somers, known for roles in the situation comedies “Three’s Company” and “Step by Step” and a series of health books, see an October 2023 story in Variety. –Matthew] [Image: Alan Hamel and Suzanne Somers. Credit: Courtesy of Alan Hamel] Alan Hamel Creates AI Clone of Late Wife Suzanne Somers 2 Years After Her…

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