[This example and link-filled story from Time describes both the advantages and challenges, for both brands and consumers, of incorporating augmented reality and the presence it evokes into the shopping experience. As always, making the technology simple, easy and intuitive to use is key. See the original story for a second image. –Matthew] [Image: Screenshots of Nike’s AR shopping lens on Snapchat. Credit: Snapchat] Augmented Reality is the Future of Online Shopping By Megan Mccluskey January 28, 2022 When you open up Snapchat’s lens carousel, you’re greeted with a variety of filters that let you do everything from smoothing your…

[Normally I’d post this to the ISPR Presence Community on Facebook, but it’s a particularly vivid example of medium-as-social-actor presence. Note the anthropomorphic language in the Digital Trends report on a routine malfunction of a Roomba vacuum cleaner. Other coverage is similar, including in PennLive where the story begins this way: “A robot vacuum cleaner made a jailbreak and escaped from a British hotel the other day. Evidently fed up with its life of forced servitude, the vacuum broke out of the hotel…” The review of available models at the link at the end of the story below defines “robot…

[This CNN story provides an example-filled update on how virtual reality is being incorporated into education from K-12 to college, and some of the costs, benefits, challenges and limitations involved. See the original story for two more images. –Matthew] [Image: A screenshot of Stanford students participating in a discussion on Zoom while working together collaboratively as avatars in VR.] Forget Zoom school. For some students, class is in session in VR By Rachel Metz, CNN Business January 27, 2022 Jeremy Bailenson has studied virtual reality for decades. But it wasn’t until last year that the Stanford professor felt the technology…

[The philosophical debate about the possibility that we’re living in a fully convincing presence-inducing simulation is fascinating even if just as an example of how simulation has become the latest metaphor for how we (try to) understand the mysteries of our world and lives. But the last few paragraphs of this essay from The New York Times raise a disturbing, less abstract. and more practical implication that I think should serve as a key motivation for presence scholarship. For more insights on this topic see two other recent articles: “Does it matter if you’re in the matrix?” in Prospect Magazine,…

[A new documentary film that presents the stories of real people in the virtual environments of VRChat is getting positive reviews, including the one below from Engadget. See the original version for a second image and a 3:03 minute “Meet the Artist” video (also available on YouTube). The review in Little White Lies concludes with this: “Many have pondered in the physical world about the net results of Zuckerberg’s intent with his metaverse, and it’s inevitable the viewer will come away from an experience like this wondering the same. How exactly will we communicate in the future? Are long-distance exchanges…

[A clever use of technology from virtual reality and video games translates stereoscopic visual information into haptic input to let people who are visually impaired more fully perceive and interact with their environment. The story below from Interesting Engineering provides details. Coverage in Futurism adds this: “Zahn and Khan’s paper frequently use Microsoft’s Kinect, a motion-detection system that adds additional features to Xbox games, as a point of reference. Both are confident their camera and setup will be smaller, less conspicuous and cheaper to build than a Kinect. It’s an intriguing idea for people with low vision. Some rely on…

[Apologies for the pause in posts last week, which was due to the sudden ‘death’ of my home computer. This story from The New York Times provides a link-filled update on innovative uses of presence in theater; see the original version for three more images. –Matthew] [Image: Nubiya Brandon performing with the NuShape Orchestra in “All Kinds of Limbo.” Credit: .The National Theater] Augmented Reality Theater Takes a Bow. In Your Kitchen. The Immersive Storytelling Studio at the National Theater in London is using technology to bring a miniature musical to viewers’ homes. It’s one of several high-tech British projects…

[The CNET story below details the current views and predictions of Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life, regarding virtual reality and the metaverse. Fast Company’s story, “Second Life’s creator is back to build a ‘metaverse that doesn’t harm people,’“ includes these additional details and quotes: “Rosedale tells me he fears that the mistakes of Web 2.0—such as the surveillance-based advertising used by Meta/Facebook—will carry over into the web’s next paradigm. He says there are better ways to make money in the metaverse. ‘Second Life is a demonstration of a model that works,’ he says. ‘It makes lots of money…

[Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori and other experts comment on the application of the uncanny valley phenomenon in the shared virtual spaces of a metaverse in this story from The Mainichi. An introduction to the uncanny valley in a November 2021 story from Discover includes this passage that includes examples and refers to a new paper about different explanations for the phenomenon: “When we spoke by Zoom, [Karl] MacDorman, a world-renowned expert in human-computer interaction, showed me several robots that tend to drop into the uncanny valley but do not come close to being humanlike. One was less humanlike than R2D2, but…

[As this Fast Company story explains, an extended ad titled “Meet You Out There” is part of a brand campaign from the company behind Pokemon Go and other AR games to advance its vision of using technology to augment rather than replace the real world, bringing people together outside instead of in a potentially dystopian metaverse. See the original story for a different image and the 2:07 minute ad (also available on YouTube). –Matthew] The maker of Pokemon Go says the metaverse should take you outside Niantic, the augmented reality gaming company behind Pokemon Go, lays out its vision for…

[Without using the term explicitly, this essay from Psyche elegantly describes (tele)presence experiences, including the requirement that they begin with an external stimulus and that they involve a subtle dual awareness of mediated and nonmediated realities. See the original version for a second image and a video. –Matthew] [Image: Detail of The Hunters in the Snow (1565), by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Credit: Courtesy the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna] When art transports us, where do we actually go? By Harri Mäcklin, a postdoctoral researcher of aesthetics at the University of Helsinki in Finland. His research interests include phenomenology, hermeneutics, and the…

[Here’s an interesting first person report on what it’s like to regularly do one’s work in virtual reality. It’s from Wired, where the original story includes a second image. –Matthew] [Image: The author’s virtual desktop, floating in orbit above Southeast Asia at night, inside of Immersed, a VR virtual work environment. Credit: Ben Klemens] I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR. Here’s What I Learned This is how it feels in the future Mark Zuckerberg promised—disembodied and unaware of my surroundings. By Ben Klemens January 6, 2022 Hello from low Earth orbit! I have spent hundreds of hours working here…