[This essay from MIT Technology Review compares the appeal and potential dangers of algorithm-based social media that compete in the “attention economy,” to the even greater appeal and dangers of artificially intelligent companions that evoke medium-as-social-actor presence, arguing that lawmakers so far seem unprepared to effectively address the latter. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/MITTR | Photos Getty] AI companions are the final stage of digital addiction, and lawmakers are taking aim Designed to be the perfect person—always available, never critical—AI companions are hooking people deeper than social media ever could. They make the attention economy look like…

[As this story from Elon University in North Carolina notes, creating a planetarium that displays a star-filled sky in virtual reality isn’t new, but Elon senior Aubrey Spicola is extending the concept by using mixed rather than virtual reality to recreate the experience of attending an interactive instructor-led planetarium session. See the original version of the story for a second image; more coverage is available in an October 2024 story from Elon; for more about Aubrey and her work see her LinkedIn page. –Matthew] [Image: Senior Honors Fellow Aubrey Spicola tests her Honors Thesis at Innovation Hall on March 24.…

[As many of us know well, the end of a semester at a college or university can be a particularly stressful time for students (and others). In addition to counseling and therapy dogs, presence experiences via virtual reality may be a helpful tool in managing the stress. The story below from Penn State University describes a simple but apparently successful example. –Matthew] [Image: First-year student Manan Jain uses a Meta headset to try the Liminal Virtual Reality experience. The virtual reality headset is in the Center for Academic Achievement and is available for use by all Penn State Beaver students.…

[A doctoral student in Australia has designed a new program that uses presence-evoking virtual reality to train volunteer ambulance officers and paramedics to manage out-of-hospital births. An excerpt from coverage by MobiHealthNews follows the short news release below from Edith Cowan University (where the original version includes a second image). –Matthew] [Image: PhD candidate Michella Hill has developed a virtual reality training program for volunteer ambulance officers and paramedics to enhance confidence and competency in managing birth emergencies before arriving at hospital] Cutting-edge VR training to equip first responders for birth emergencies A new virtual reality (VR) training program developed…

[This forceful essay in The Conversation by a cognitive neuroscientist captures what to me is most fascinating and potentially dangerous about rapidly evolving artificial intelligence technology: its ability to mimic human cognition and social cues that evoke compelling medium-as-social-actor presence illusions. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Kundra/Shutterstock] We need to stop pretending AI is intelligent – here’s how By Guillaume Thierry, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Bangor UniversityApril 14, 2025 We are constantly fed a version of AI that looks, sounds and acts suspiciously like us. It speaks in polished sentences, mimics emotions, expresses curiosity, claims to feel compassion, even dabbles in what…

[This story from SHINE (the digital arm of Shanghai Daily) examines a presence phenomenon in which women in China develop emotional attachments to virtual characters and in some cases even bring the parasocial relationship into real life via cosplayers. See the original version for six more images. –Matthew] Why so many women find heartthrobs in virtual reality. Is it a worrying trend? By Lu FeiranApril 14, 2025 Yunnan Province resident Xiao Cheng, disillusioned with male relationships, has a boyfriend. She spends an hour with him after work every day but never holds his hand. His name is Caleb Xia. He’s…

[A team of researchers in Japan are using the combination of real (nonmediated) doors and virtual ones to create more “natural and intuitive” transitions less likely to disrupt presence for users of mixed reality technologies. Some of the details are reported in the news release below from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology via EurekAlert! (it’s also available via Tech Xplore). –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Daiki Hagimori from NTT DOCOMO, Inc., Japan] Transforming doors into gateways to the virtual world: The future of mixed reality! Researchers from Japan pioneer a technology that uses real-world doors to connect the real and…

[While it may provide important benefits, especially given age-related demographic trends, the prospect of utilizing presence-evoking technologies to supplement or even replace human beings who provide health care to the elderly raises concerns about dystopian outcomes. The author of the important story below from a 404 Media email newsletter reports on his test of a new service that uses audio AI to check in on and converse with elderly family members each day and then provides a report on the interaction to the service subscriber. See the original version of the story for two more images and audio recordings of…

[As this story from Mixed notes, “without tactile feedback, typing in VR feels unnatural and inefficient,” but a new input device could make using one technology (a computer) within another (VR) evoke greater presence (I guess that could be called nested presence). See the original version of the story for a different image and the 1:02 minute demonstration video (also on YouTube), and see Github for more information. –Matthew] [Image: Source: GitHub] DIY haptic controller brings touch typing to Virtual Reality A creative developer has built a wearable eight-key controller that could solve one of VR’s most persistent challenges: text…

[The story below from Carnegie-Mellon University’s Center for Transformational Play describes a doctoral student’s creative and research work in a project that uses a presence-evoking virtual reality experience to help people feel connected to the deepest parts of the ocean; see the original version of the story for three different images and a video trailer. –Matthew] [Image: Screenshot from “Echo of the Abyss” trailer] Using Virtual Reality to Connect Players With Ocean Ecosystems By: Maila Jill RibleApril 2, 2025 Fewer people have been to the deepest parts of the ocean than have walked on the surface of the moon. Researchers…

[A mixed reality game developed at the University of Maryland helps players learn about the consequences of different behaviors during a thunderstorm, and hopefully stay safe when they encounter dangerous storm conditions in the real world. Follow the links in the story below for more information. –Matthew] [Image: A car protects a cartoon owl from a lightning strike in a mixed-reality game designed to teach lightning safety that was designed by a UMD researcher and created with help from a student team. Credit: Image courtesy of Guangyang Fang] Game Keeps Players ‘Virtually’ Safe From Lightning VR Headset Provides Immersive Learning…

[If presence involves the failure to overlook the role of technology in a mediated experience, artificial intelligence clearly represents a new source of presence misperceptions. This is the second of two posts today about the purposeful misrepresentation of materials produced by AI as if they were created by human beings, and the likelihood that soon all of us will have great difficulty distinguishing human-made and machine-made media content. The story below is from EL PAÍS and describes a recent significant misrepresentation of AI as human in scholarly publication venues. –Matthew] [Image: Andrea Colamedici, the creator of Jianwei Xun, pictured in…