[A potentially useful introduction to lessons and discussions about presence, this opinion piece from The Hill provides a big-picture perspective on the history and future of immersive technologies and their significant benefits and dangers. –Matthew] A new era of virtual reality brings many promises for the future — and perils By Roger Cochetti, an Opinion Contributor who has served as a senior executive with COMSAT, IBM, VeriSign and CompTIA. A former U.S. government official, he has helped found a number of nonprofits in the tech sector and is the author of textbooks on the history of satellite communications. October 10,…

[More research is needed to demonstrate its efficacy but in a clever application of presence-evoking technology, a small Stanford Medicine study suggests that the use of virtual reality simulations of decluttering has the potential to improve treatment for hoarding disorder.  –Matthew] [Image: A virtual reality simulation of a patient’s home. Credit: Carolyn Rodriguez Lab] Virtual reality helps people with hoarding disorder practice decluttering A first-of-its-kind study by Stanford Medicine researchers lets patients practice letting go of treasured objects in simulations of their own homes. By Nina Bai, a science writer in the Office of Communications October 17, 2023 Many people…

[In a world of more and increasingly convincing presence illusions, incidents like the one reported in the Business Insider story below are likely to become more common. Coverage by Inside Edition includes a 2:02 minute video report and begins this way: “Americans have always been told that if we ‘see something, say something,’ and one New York resident did exactly that when he saw what he thought was an apartment on fire. Kieran Murry was looking outside of his window when he thought he saw out-of-control flames in a Manhattan high-rise across the street. ‘I used my smartphone to zoom…

[Although the topic seems very far from, and ironic in the context of, the grim realities of war in the news, this very thoughtful essay from Boston Review uses speculative fiction and thought experiments to illustrate some of the many complex psychological and behavioral processes and ethical considerations involved as we (at least those with the resources) consider how we should use technologies that create “lifelike models of real people” that evoke medium-as-social-actor presence. –Matthew] [Image: A still from “Be Right Back,” a 2013 episode of Black Mirror in which a woman digitally resurrects her deceased boyfriend.] Our Avatars, Ourselves…

[An October 5, 2023 article from the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) about an apparently improved modular hologram product that doesn’t require glasses to create a 3D illusion led me to the more in-depth interview from Planet Attractions below. See the original version of the interview for ten other pictures and a video, and see the Miirage website for more information. –Matthew] [Image: Source: Medium] Bridging realities: How Miirage’s no-glasses holographic experience could change the game for immersive experiences Miirage is a new modular holographic system bringing the virtual world to life without any additional need for…

[To many who study presence, experiences while dreaming don’t qualify as examples of the phenomenon because they don’t involve (misperceptions of) technology, but this story from The Daily Beast reports on a new AI-based device intended to trigger the specific type of dreaming known as lucid dreaming; the Halo technology is described as “giving people a pretty unfettered user interface with reality” and the story compares the experience to that offered by virtual reality. See the original version for two more images, and for more details see coverage from CNBC, as well as the website of Prophetic, the startup company…

[This story from The Verge carefully notes what is new and potentially harmful about the latest incorporation of technologies that easily and effectively change the image taken by a smartphone camera. See the original version for a 41-second video (also available on YouTube). For related coverage, see The New York Times, where the lead consumer technology writer describes says he “shot and edited dozens of photos with the Pixel 8. I was impressed, creeped out and skeptical that I would want to keep generating fake photos.”  –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Allison Johnson / The Verge] The Pixel 8 and the what-is-a-photo…

[The nonprofit organization AIandYou works to increase “AI literacy” to help the public avoid being manipulated by technologies that use artificial intelligence. As Politico reports, AIandYou is planning a campaign that uses deepfake technologies to demonstrate and educate the public about their use in the 2024 elections. Watch the 5:25 minute video mentioned in the story and see the AIandYou website for much more information. In related news, see the NPR story “Video game clips and old videos are flooding social media about Israel and Gaza,” the NPR audio report “Detangling the online disinformation about the war between Israel and…

[There’s a new development in the ongoing debate about the possibility that our universe is a sophisticated, presence-evoking simulation. The details are reported in this story from ScienceAlert, where the original version includes a second image and an 11:47 minute video (also available on YouTube). While the debate will probably never be resolved, the continuing and apparently growing fascination in science and popular culture with the idea that everything we experience is an illusion is consistent with the fact that we’re living in an era in which humans are using technologies to produce increasingly more, and more convincing, illusions.…

[A new augmented reality public art project in Philadelphia features photographs and interviews with some of the diverse people who work and travel on the buses, trains and trolleys of SEPTA (the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority). As the artist, Anula Shetty, notes, “the goal is to create connections between people who cross paths during their daily commute”; QR codes are embedded in photos displayed throughout the system and as this SEPTA blog post puts it, “Through this augmented reality series of works born of Philadelphian stories, daydreams, thoughts, and performances that Shetty has filmed – Philly Daydreams allows travelers to…

[Presence-evoking augmented reality and artificial intelligence are being used to help more people experience and learn about the monuments and history of Greece, as reported by the Associated Press via ABC News. See the Greek telecom company Cosmote’s website for more, including a 2:19 minute video (also available on YouTube).  –Matthew] [Image: A man holds up a tablet showing a digitally overlayed virtual reconstruction of the ancient Parthenon temple, at the Acropolis Hill in Athens, Greece on Tuesday, June 13, 2023. Credit: Petros Giannakouris/The Associated Press.] An app shows how ancient Greek sites looked thousands of years ago.…

[Though he doesn’t use the term, the writer of this essay in The Verge describes how the nascent status of AI-based voices and images being added to social media platforms could lead to a dramatic increase in experiences of presence, especially medium-as-social-actor presence: “feeds that were once defined by the connections they enabled between human beings will have become something else: a partially synthetic social network.” –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Álvaro Bernis / The Verge] The synthetic social network is coming Between ChatGPT’s surprisingly human voice and Meta’s AI characters, our feeds may be about to change forever By Casey Newton,…