[This story from Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center describes how a new course in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is helping medical students learn about discrimination and bias by putting them in the roles of both target and offender. The original story includes an informative 3:50 minute video that is also available on YouTube. The story doesn’t identify the software being used, but one source for this kind of training material is Equal Reality. For more information on this top, see “Current and Potential Uses of AR/VR for Equity and Inclusion” from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).…

[A new large-scale presence-evoking immersive venue format called a “shared reality dome” is coming to Los Angeles and Dallas, as described in this story from CNBC. Although the focus is on sports, note the discussion near the end of the story about other applications. The press release announcing the Cosm and TNT partnership is available from PR Newswire. –Matthew] [Image: Cosm’s shared reality dome concept for viewing live sports broadcasts. Credit: Cosm Venues]  NBA and NHL broadcasts are coming soon to immersive ‘shared reality’ domes By Alex Sherman October 31, 2023 Warner Bros. Discovery and Cosm, a privately held company…

[Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst manipulated two types of presence for mixed reality users and identified a negative correlation between level of presence and reaction time, suggesting a useful real-time metric for enhancing presence experiences. See the original story for pictures of two of the authors, and follow the link to the new published research article. –Matthew] [Image: Figure 2 from the researchers’ publication: Realistic, abstract, plausible, and implausible virtual objects used in the experiments] New Study: Immersive Engagement in Mixed Reality Can Be Measured with Reaction Time University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have developed a possible system…

[This story from The New Yorker provides vivid descriptions of the compelling nature of medium-as-social-actor presence created by AI-based chatbots, and some both good and bad impacts it can have. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker] Your A.I. Companion Will Support You No Matter What New chatbots offer friendship, intimacy, and unconditional encouragement. Do they mitigate isolation or exacerbate it? By Kyle Chayka November 13, 2023 In December of 2021, Jaswant Singh Chail, a nineteen-year-old in the United Kingdom, told a friend, “I believe my purpose is to assassinate the queen of the royal family.”…

[It’s easy to forget that there’s a long history of increasingly effective presence-evoking technologies, and that the illusions of each improved technology impressed the users of its era. This story from the Lewiston Sun Journal in Maine provides a vivid description of an early presence-evoking technology and reactions to using it. See the original story for eight examples of stereographs along with two other images, and follow the links at the end below for more information and examples. –Matthew] [Image: A woman depicted using a handheld stereograph viewer in a 1907 newspaper advertisement. Credit: The National Tribune, Washington, DC] Virtual reality…

[This link-filled story from HealthTech Magazine describes how presence-evoking technologies are being deployed more often and for more applications in the large Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA) in the United States. –Matthew] Telehealth and Virtual Reality Expand into Mainstream Care at the VA Federal health agencies find that virtual visits (and VR) make appointments more convenient for patients. By Calvin Hennick, a freelance journalist who specializes in business and technology writing. He is a contributor to the CDW family of technology magazines October 30, 2023 In a pilot physical therapy program run by the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in…