[A Florida company’s technology designed to motivate exercise and other healthy behavior creates a real-time (presence-evoking) reflection of a person modified (e.g., based on their heart rate) so that they appear “with up to a 30 percent increase or reduction in weight or muscle mass.” Details are reported in this story from The Washington Post; visit the EnvisionBody website for more information including a one-minute video (an extended version of the video is available in an earlier press release via PR Newswire). A negative opinion about the effects of the technology can be found in Input Magazine. –Matthew] [Image: EnvisionBody…

[This story from Mississippi State University is about an interesting new application of presence-evoking technology that helps students safely and quickly learn about processes that in the real world are both high-risk and slow. See the first link at the end for more information including two earlier articles (here and here) and a slide set. –Matthew] [Image: Prototype of virtual greenhouse in development. Credit: Pulseworks, LLC] MSU virtual reality initiative to help future growers navigate high risk ag enterprise Contact: Vanessa Beeson February 1, 2021 STARKVILLE, Miss. – Learning how to maneuver the high-risk aspects of the agriculture industry is…

[As Newsweek reports, Hanson Robotics is set to produce thousands of Sophias and three other robot models starting this year; see the original story for three different pictures and a short video. For other interesting news about medium-as-social-actor presence with robots see a Yale University story about research by the Interactive Machines Group that explores how a robot can use eye gaze and humor to set photography subjects at ease and an earlier study of how a group of bystander robots with sad facial expressions can stop humans from abusing another robot. –Matthew] [Image: Sophia in lab. Source: Reuters, where…

[As Valve CEO Gabe Newell says in this story from New Zealand’s 1 News, some of the company’s ideas about brain-computer interfaces are “indistinguishable from science fiction,” and many of them involve the promise and peril of presence. See the original story for two more images and two videos including a 12:22 interview with the CEO. –Matthew] [Image: Open BCI’s Galea BCI headset design. Credit: OpenBCI] Gabe Newell says brain-computer interface tech will allow video games far beyond what human ‘meat peripherals’ can comprehend The head of US gaming company Valve Corporation says a future is fast approaching where video…

[The technology described in a new patent filed by Sony would allow other people to not only watch but directly alter the real-time experience of a VR user. This widely cited story is from IGN, where it includes a 3 minute video. For a related development see a Comicbook story about a different Sony patent that involves “Placement of User Information in a Game Space.” –Matthew] PlayStation Files Patent For Technology That Lets Spectators Mess With You in VR “Spectators have given you a soup ladle.” By Jordan Oloman 29 January 2021 PlayStation has filed a patent for technology that…

[This new story from Psychology Today links the fundamental idea of perceptual illusions with both the polarization of views about political and other issues and a potentially valuable intervention to reduce it. See the original story for two short videos about optical illusions. Another illusion that I find compelling (and which we just discussed in my Psychological Processing of Media class) is presented and discussed in a 2016 story in The Verge, and for an example of the effects of our perceptions about the world, see “6 Photographers Invited to Photograph 1 Man Reveal the Power of Perspective” from My…