[This piece from The Conversation (reprinted this month in Quartz) provides an overview of just some of the fascinating practical and ethical issues related to medium-as-social-actor presence; the original versions include two videos. –Matthew] [Image: Mommy? Toyota’s Kirobo Mini robot (Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon)] Robot babies from Japan raise all sorts of questions about how parents bond with AI October 17, 2016 Mark Robert Anderson, Professor in Computing and Information Systems, Edge Hill University Driven by a declining population, a trend for developing robotic babies has emerged in Japan as a means of encouraging couples to become “parents”. The approaches taken vary…

[This development is another sign of the growing importance of presence-evoking technologies; the story is from Fortune. –Matthew] [Image: A journalist uses Google’s Daydream VR headset during an event to introduce Google hardware products on October 4, 2016 in San Francisco, California. Credit: Ramin Talaie – Getty Images] New York Is Planning to Juice Its VR Industry With a Splashy New Lab To spur job growth in virtual reality and augmented reality startups By Lisa Eadicicco December 14, 2016 Companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft have spent years proclaiming that technologies like virtual and augmented reality represent the future of…

[I’ve removed the more familiar review of VR’s past and present from this long story from Digital Trends (which features videos and more images) to focus on the part that forecasts the far and near future of VR and presence. –Matthew] We have virtual reality. What’s next is straight out of ‘The Matrix’ By Nick Mokey — December 19, 2016 [snip] A kid born in 1999 is just now old enough to rent the R-rated Matrix — or more likely, stream it. Yet in those intervening 17 years, entering the Matrix has gone from a dystopian sci-fi dream to a…

[The introduction of Oculus Rooms and Parties described in this story from Engadget (which features more images) could be a big step toward social presence in VR; the Oculus blog post about the features says “The first wave of VR was all about the magic of presence, the immersive sense of actually being inside a virtual space. The next step is to let you feel that same sense of presence with other people in VR.” –Matthew] Gear VR gets social with Oculus Rooms and Parties Rift users will get these features in 2017. Nicole Lee December 16, 2016 A few…

[This story from Wired reviews the evolution of NextVR’s coverage of football and basketball and includes implicit and explicit references to presence, discussion of the potential for memory confusions between 3-D VR and in-person game experiences, and the obstacles to widespread adoption of live experiences of sports via VR. See the original story for several more images.—Matthew] The NFL’s New VR Highlights Take Football to a Whole New Level Tim Moynihan 12.11.16 Deep in the second quarter of the New York Giants’ win over the Chicago Bears on November 20, Giants quarterback Eli Manning slung a short pass to running…

[According to economist Richard Baldwin, presence is playing a crucial role in the latest phase of a 200,000 years long trend of globalization. This story is from Quartz, where the original includes more images (including the global income chart mentioned). –Matthew] Brace yourself: the most disruptive phase of globalization is just beginning Eshe Nelson December 07, 2016 To properly understand globalization, you need to start 200,000 years ago. Richard Baldwin skillfully takes on this daunting task in a new book, starting all the way back with the hunter-gatherers. For too long, he says, traditional analysis of trade has been too…

[This book review from Medium, and apparently the book The Fourth Transformation, is a nice introduction to the rapid development of presence-evoking technologies since the 1940s and into the future. A sample quote: “The key to the fourth transformation is an emerging suite of technologies that will dissolve the boundary between what we see on our screens and the world around us. Rather than seeing them confined to the frame of a computer screen or a mobile device, we will be able to generate a convincing illusion that our digital creations have jumped into what we used to call the…

[This story from The Guardian is about another promising application of presence; the discussion toward the end about the best types of virtual environment for this context is particularly interesting. The original article includes more pictures. –Matthew] [Image: Erin Martucci and her daughter. Photograph: Mary Bratton] Can virtual reality help women cope with childbirth? Erin Martucci is believed to be the first to use a virtual reality headset to manage her pain during labor, and doctors hope more women will follow Tina Amirtha Friday 9 December 2016 Erin Martucci had been enjoying the beach vista and gazing at a flock…

[In addition to the quote in the first section about how sexuality is the best context for illustrating the promise of VR, I think the section in this story from GeekWire titled “The girlfriend experience” is particularly interesting – it argues that VR and AR have the potential to offer a new level of psychologically intimate sexual experience. The original story includes more images. –Matthew] Virtual reality porn is just foreplay: Why augmented reality is the future of adult entertainment By Monica Nickelsburg on November 16, 2016 The adult industry has been propelling — and in some cases initiating —…

[This story from The Register is an interesting first-person account of the experience of using a Beam telepresence robot (‘unit’) to attend an IT conference. –Matthew] I was a robot and this is what I learned The internet of me 7 Dec 2016, Trevor Pott Sysadmin blog For one brief instant, Microsoft was the good guy. Deep within the often customer-hostile behemoth, left after the arrogance and straight on past the victim blaming is the office of Brian First, with the Microsoft Experience Design Group. Alongside a company called Event Presence, Brian made me feel like a real person, actual…

[The new Global Virtual Reality Association (GVRA) seems likely to play an important role in the development of a key presence-related industry; this story is from Engadget, where it includes a different image; the official press release is available from PR Newswire. –Matthew] Biggest names in VR band together to create industry standards GVRA isn’t exactly the catchiest name Cherlynn Low December 7, 2016 The world’s most popular virtual reality headset makers have assembled. Google, Oculus, Sony, HTC, Samsung and Acer have come together to create a non-profit organization called the Global Virtual Reality Association (or the far snappier GVRA,…

[Journalism continues to explore how best to use presence-evoking technologies to engage and inform; this is from Reveal’s website, where you can access various versions of the Disfellowshipped production. –Matthew] Disfellowshipped: A virtual reality experience By Trey Bundy / November 29, 2016   Our first virtual reality production, Disfellowshipped, is an attempt to help push forward the possibilities of immersive storytelling in journalism – to tell a narrative, character-rich, investigative story in VR. Media outlets around the world are getting their feet wet in the VR world, and some astonishing work has been done. But so far, VR largely has…