[This story from The New York Times (where it includes another image) sets the stage for rich discussions about different types of presence: Technology marches on, “But will passengers ever set foot on [a] plane piloted by robots, or humans thousands of miles from the cockpit?” –Matthew] Planes Without Pilots By John Markoff April 6, 2015 MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Mounting evidence that the co-pilot crashed a Germanwings plane into a French mountain has prompted a global debate about how to better screen crewmembers for mental illness and how to ensure that no one is left alone in the cockpit.…

[Looking for evidence that presence-evoking technologies are ‘important’? This story from TechCrunch, which includes another chart, presents new forecast analyses for the AR and VR markets from Digi-Capital. –Matthew] Augmented And Virtual Reality To Hit $150 Billion, Disrupting Mobile By 2020 Posted April 7, 2015 by Tim Merel (@DigiCapitalist) Editor’s note: Tim Merel is the managing director of Digi-Capital. Virtual reality and augmented reality are exciting – Google Glass coming and going, Facebook’s $2 billion for Oculus, Google’s $542 million into Magic Leap, not to mention Microsoft’s HoloLens. There are amazing early-stage platforms and apps, but VR/AR in 2015 feels a…

[Here’s an unusual context for presence: ‘Fake food’ is apparently common in Japan’s restaurants, and now it’s expanded into fashion; this story from Munchies includes several more pictures. See also “Japan’s newest trend: Bacon n’ eggs on the iPhone” from CNBC (!). –Matthew] This Japanese Fake Food Artist Makes Ramen and Bacon Wearable By Hilary Pollack April 1, 2015 In Japan, fake food is more than a menu enhancer or a quirky decoration: It’s a straight-up artform. Making an egg appear gelatinous, a bowl of noodles appear still-warm, or a piece of bacon appear juicy requires more than just a…

[This story from Newsweek only begins to raise some of the implications – for presence and otherwise – of customizable robot personalities stored in the cloud. –Matthew] [Image: MIT’s social robot Nexi; from Popular Science] Google Patents Customisable Robot Personalities By Luke Hurst 4/2/15 at 12:02 PM Google is preparing for a world in which robots possess human-like personalities after filing a patent for the technology in the United States. Quartz, a tech and business news website, reports that the patent, awarded this week to the technology giant, will allow for the downloading and customization of robot personalities which could…

[Interesting take (note the date) on first order (biology) and second order (technology) mediation, i.e., presence and telepresence; this is from Tom’s Hardware, where the story includes more pictures. –Matthew] Move Over, Virtual Reality: Literal Reality Is The Next Big Thing By Seth Colaner, Fritz Nelson, Niels Broekhuijsen, Lucian Armasu, Rexly Penaflorida II April 1, 2015 Move over, Oculus Rift. Get lost, HTC Vive. Don’t even bother, Microsoft’s Hololens. There’s an unbelievable new tech in town called literal reality (LR) that completely blows away the best VR or AR experience you’ve ever had or could hope to have. An entity…

[Howard Lichtman, founder and president of the Human Productivity Lab, an independent consultancy and research firm that helps organizations design visual collaboration strategies and deploy solutions (and a keynote speaker at PRESENCE 2009 in Los Angeles), is also Chief Creative/Commercial Officer of Array Telepresence, which takes a different approach to creating immersive telepresence experiences for the high-end TP market. Details are below from Telepresence Options, and a video interview with the company principals is available here. –Matthew] Array Telepresence Debuts Immersive Telepresence Using Your Existing Videoconferencing System at Enterprise Connect March 16, 2015 Array Telepresence, a start-up telepresence solution provider…