[Here’s a short piece from Forbes about the potential roles of VR and presence in the future of dating and love. See the original for more images. –Matthew] Move Over Online Dating! Virtual Reality Is The Future Of Finding Love Sol Rogers, Contributor, CEO and Founder of REWIND, an Emmy nominated immersive content studio that fuses bleeding-edge technology with award-winning creative storytelling. September 20, 2019 Modern dating is a far cry from the courtship our grandparents experienced. In the past, people met their partners at work, on a night out, or at church. Then came the internet and cellular technology—suddenly,…

[This post from the excellent Kottke.org blog highlights insights from a Real Life magazine story about how Apple’s AirPod wireless earphones represent a type of augmented reality, expressing “a more complete embrace of our simultaneous existence in physical and digital space,” with concerning implications for the public sphere. Extended excerpts of the Real Life story follow below. –Matthew] [Image: Potsdamer Plaz (2017) by Diane Meyer. Hand sewn archival ink jet print. Courtesy the artist. Source: Real Life.] AirPods, an Augmented-Reality Wearable Computer Posted by Jason Kottke September 19, 2019 For Real Life magazine, Drew Austin writes about wireless headphones and…

[This story from Bloomberg describes a new, apparently compelling combination of fine dining with virtual reality and the potential of such presence experiences to be popular beyond the artistic and culinary elite. See the original version for several more pictures. For more information and a 7:10 minute video, see Mattia Casalegno’s website and to make reservations visit jamesbeard.org. –Matthew] [Image: The Aerobanquets RMX experience, previewed at the James Beard House in New York. Credit: Amy Lombard for Bloomberg Businessweek] Virtual Reality Is the Latest Dinner Party Trick The James Beard House joins one of the country’s most lauded chefs to…

[In an inspiring cross-disciplinary effort, a game lab and a trauma center are collaborating on VR applications to help patients with spinal cord injuries, as reported in this story from Technical.ly Baltimore; for more coverage see MICA’s website. –Matthew] [Image: MICA student Marco Cortes tests what it would be like to play a VR game with a spinal cord injury. Credit: Photo courtesy of MICA] MICA Game Lab and Shock Trauma are developing VR games for spinal injury patients With the collaboration, the Baltimore institutions are developing virtual reality games that use a quadstick, which can be controlled by the…

[An interesting example of presence experiences created to bring history and cultural heritage to the public is described in this story from Korea’s Yonhap News Agency. For more details see Branding in Asia and a 1:49 minute video report from KBS via YouTube; for a 3:51 minute report in Korean, see a video from the Korea Cultural Heritage Administration. –Matthew] [Image: Source: Branding in Asia] Joseon Dynasty era gate virtually restored with digital technology August 20, 2019 By Kim Soo-yeon SEOUL, Aug. 20 (Yonhap) — Donuimun, one of the four main old gates that were part of the wall that…

[The Verge reports on the latest viral deepfake app Zao and the privacy concerns it raises. In closely related coverage, Beebom has a list of eight “best deepfake apps and websites you can try for fun,” NBC has a story about a viral deepfake video of Saturday Night Live star Bill Hader morphing into Arnold Schwarzenegger and efforts to counter nefarious uses of the technology; Shelly Palmer focuses on the implications in the context of online dating, a piece in The Conversation (reprinted by Snopes) focuses on legal recourses, and a Facebook blog post describes a new consortium’s $10 million…

[Vogue reports on a temporary immersive art exhibition in New York that uses presence (including via VR and AR) to raise awareness and change behavior regarding the environment. See the original story for more images, Fox 5 for a 1:47 minute video report, and the Arcadia Earth website for more information, many more pictures and a teaser video. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: David Mitchell / Courtesy of Arcadia Earth] Enter Arcadia Earth, an Immersive Art World Designed to Inspire Environmental Action By Natasha Silva-Jelly August 30, 2019 The Amazon is burning, and fear is igniting worldwide about the future of our…

[This detailed story from EGM reviews the early and recent history of virtual reality and the hopeful views of current developers about its future. See the original version for lots more pictures. –Matthew] The Perpetual Tomorrow of Virtual Reality VR still hasn’t matched the reveries of science fiction. But for developers, hope springs eternal. September 11, 2019 By Khee Hoon Chan “Pancake games” is a term used frequently among virtual reality aficionados to refers to non-VR titles. Like “walking simulators”—a term mocking that genre’s perceived lack of interactivity—the phrase originally carried a slightly derogatory tone, pointing to the VR community’s…

[Here’s a summary from E – The Environmental Magazine of some of the ways VR and presence can help us preserve our natural environment. See the original version for a different image. –Matthew] [Image: Source: B&T] Virtual Reality Could Have a Positive Impact on the Environment — Here’s Why Kate Harveston September 10, 2019 You’ve probably heard of virtual reality (VR) talked about as a fun and immersive technology, but you may not have considered how it could favorably impact the environment. Here are some reasons why something that everyone’s buzzing about could have planet-protecting advantages.…

[To me a great value of the presence concept is that it raises thought-provoking questions about our lives and even the nature of existence. Regardless of your views about the validity of “simulation theory” (the idea that we’re likely living in a computer simulation), it illustrates the power of simulation and presence as a metaphor for our technology-dominated era. While thinking about how we’d change our perceptions and behavior should we discover that we and/or our world are simulations is intriguing (see Jones, Lombard and Jasak, 2011), this column from The New York Times warns against conducting formal tests. –Matthew]…

[This ZDNet story describes successful heart surgeries performed via robot from 20 miles away, a milestone accomplishment in telemedicine and telesurgery. For more information see the press release via Business Wire and the article in The Lancet’s EClinicalMedicine; for more on the positive impact of telemedicine see “In the coalfields, telemedicine provides antidote to doctor shortages, poor health” in The Roanoke Times. –Matthew] [Image: Figure 1C from the EClinicalMedicine article shows the surgeon controlling the remotely located Corindus robot.] First long-distance heart surgery performed via robot In a feat of networking, engineering, and medicine, a doctor performed a heart procedure…

[This story from Brink describes an innovative use of virtual reality and presence to observe experienced offenders as they commit burglaries to better understand and thereby prevent future real-world crimes. For more information, see the Virtual Burglary Project on ResearchGate. –Matthew] [Image: Source: Semantic Scholar] Virtual Reality to Observe Crimes As They Unfold. Here’s How September 5, 2019 Claire Nee, Director of International Centre for Research in Forensic Psychology Ordinary citizens worry a lot about community safety. In particular, surveys and research suggest that residential burglary is one of the most feared crimes internationally. Until recently, when trying to understand…