[The story below is about how marine biologist Erika Woolsey is using presence-evoking technologies to educate and build empathy that “make the ocean more accessible to the masses so that they might strive to protect it.” It’s part of TIME magazine’s “TIME Trailblazers: Designing and Making the Future” series; the original version includes a short video. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Xander Peterson] Why Erika Woolsey Sees Virtual Reality Tech as an Ocean Conservation Tool By Alison Van HoutenSeptember 2, 2026 Marine biologist Dr. Erika Woolsey once led a 450-person dive on the kaleidoscopic coral reefs of Palau, a tropical archipelago nation…

[This story from the news section of the Golden Globes website describes the technological, creative, industry-related and philosophical evolution of presence-evoking experiences presented during the first ten years of the Venice Immersive section of the Venice International Film Festival. Note the summary statement at the end: “the old boundary between watching a story and entering one is slowly disappearing.” I added the links to sites with additional information. –Matthew] [Image: Screenshot from Nevatars. Credit: Venice Immersive, Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia] Venice Immersive Event Puts the Viewer in the Middle of the Action By Federica PolidoroSeptember 1, 2026 For a…

[In this essay from DEVELOP3D, an industry expert alludes to presence in arguing that “The future is not the headset. It is spatial computing – the ability to experience and interact with digital information in three dimensions in a more human way, much like we experience the physical world.” He believes spatial computing can only be successful when people in businesses identify use cases and workflows that demonstrate its value and lead to incremental changes in habits and behaviors that lead to mass adoption. –Matthew] Beyond headsets: Spatial computing’s future Spatial computing is about much more than VR headsets. As…

[A high school student in North Carolina learned to create virtual environments and then developed a proposal to use immersive digital environments to “allow learners to design virtual spaces using Unity, experience those spaces through VR and share their creations with other students.” The proposal has been approved and the learning experience will be available for students across the state. The story below from India Today is the most complete I’ve found; more information is available from Spectrum News, where it includes a 1:47 minute video report, and from a news release by Lexington Senior High School. Note: I believe…

[Three decades ago, asking people how they feel about a computer filling deeply personal roles like religious leader was only hypothetical – today it’s a reality. In the essay below from Religion News Service (RNS) a professor of religion comments on recent stories about pastors using AI – in one case creating a digital twin of himself to interact with his congregation (that California pastor describes his PastorGPT service in a 2:57 minute video on YouTube). See also “The Malnourished Ministry of Relational AI” in Christianity Today, where the author frames his analysis with the 1909 E. M. Forster short…

[This story from the United States Air Force News Service highlights the monetary and other benefits of using “realistic” and “immersive” presence-evoking virtual reality to train people for the challenging and high stakes work of maintaining aircraft. See the original version of the story for a second image. –Matthew] [Image: U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Austin Malanowski, 913th Airlift Group Virtual Reality Training Center program coordinator, (right), guides Tech. Sgt. Tisha Martin, 913th AG paralegal, through a virtual training environment during the May Unit Training Assembly at Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas, May 3, 2026. Malanowski spearheaded the transformation…

[Those interested in presence-evoking technologies and their impacts should know about Tess McKinney and the work she does to “[help] hospitals, colleges, and universities adopt virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and other immersive technologies.” This news release about her is from the Nebraska Business Development Center; for more information visit the website of her company XRenegades. –Matthew] Building the Future Through Virtual Reality XRenegades Helps Healthcare and Education Embrace Immersive Technology August 28, 2026Contact: NBDC Communications – [email protected] Tess McKinney was sitting in a national conference session on virtual reality in 2019 when she heard something that didn’t sit…

[An AI expert at a venture capital firm recently created a series of videos in which a fictional college student competed with her peers to join different sororities at the University of Alabama. The fact that the student and the videos were all AI creations was only revealed in the last video. This interview from Inc. with the creator of what became a viral experiment reveals some interesting assessments and predictions about how people respond to attempts to create presence misperceptions about the use of this fast-evolving technology (see in particular the last two paragraphs).  –Matthew] A Fake Sorority Hopeful…

[The author of this essay from CNET argues that Meta and other companies that make and market smart glasses should learn lessons from the long history of attempts to encourage consumers to use and purchase virtual reality headsets. As with VR, companies need to give potential adopters of smart glasses opportunities to gain experience with the product and help establish a social contract with them about how and where to use the technology. As he notes (in the second-to-last paragraph), these steps to counter the current backlash against ‘pervert glasses’ are important because of the many “possibilities of assistive wearable…

[A new program at Harvard Business School is just one example of universities experimenting with using AI to create digital avatars that teach students and train instructors. This story from Fortune via MSN describes and considers the benefits and limitations of the Harvard effort; excerpts from an opinion essay in The College Fix that mentions and links to stories about other examples and urges universities to proceed with caution follows below. –Matthew] Harvard’s $699 startup bootcamp has professors who never sleep but that’s because they’re AI clones By Mia Osmonbekov, News FellowAugust 25, 2026 The newest Harvard Business School professor…

[This long but interesting report from Next Reality describes efforts to increase the ability of AI agents in virtual and mixed reality to use gestures as users expect (and thereby enhance presence). The challenge is “not ‘can an avatar move its arms naturally,’ which is largely solved, but ‘can an agent gesture at the right thing, at the right moment, in a way tied to the actual 3D space it shares with the user.’” See the linked sources in the report as well as the Google Research blog and a 3:26 minute CHI 2026 video presentation on YouTube for more…

[This story from MedCity News is about how surgeons are using presence-evoking immersive media to improve patient outcomes, along with other benefits. The story highlights two important points that apply across many presence applications: the value of providing users with a spectrum of presence-evoking technologies – in this case from images and video to 3D models and virtual reality, and the importance of not just inventing better technologies but putting them into “regular, practical, and effective use” by developing collaborative systems that make the technologies widely available and train people in how to use them effectively. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Mikalai…