[This story from Tech Monitor, which features our friend and colleague Stéphane Bouchard, considers some of the potential negative consequences of presence experiences via virtual reality; one of them involves inverse presence, the perception that nonmediated experience is actually mediated. –Matthew] [Image: Credit: Photo by David McNew/Getty Images] Is virtual reality bad for our mental health? It’s touted as the gateway to the metaverse. But the impact of prolonged use of virtual reality on our mental well-being is under-researched. By Greg Noone February 24, 2022 (Updated February 28, 2022) Jeff Grover* likes to walk, a pastime suited to the landscape…

[I’m more of a Star Trek person, but this detailed description from CNN of a new elaborate (and expensive) two-day immersive experience at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida suggests that it will evoke an impressively wide variety of compelling presence experiences. See the original story for a 12-image photo gallery. For more coverage, including more pictures and a video, see Good Morning America, and for an extensive collection of videos see Disney’s Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser YouTube playlist. For more about the new AI-based interactive droid named D3-O9, said to be a test for a new platform for immersive,…

[This intriguing essay from Scientific American isn’t about technology and doesn’t refer to telepresence or presence, but it raises several issues related to the concept(s) of presence, including the difficulty of agreeing on definitions of primary terms we use like “reality”; the important roles of the attributes of media technology users in presence experiences; the relationship between presence and dreams; the limitations of referring to “first order” mediation (experiences mediated by our biology) and “second order” mediation (experience mediated by both our biology and technology); and the radical possibility that rather than all of us living in a giant metaverse-like…

[From the early days of Cliff Nass’ Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) research we’ve noted drivers’ social responses to cars as well, due largely to their direct, haptic interaction with their vehicles. Voice-based GPS navigation systems added another set of cues to enhance Cars As Social Actors perceptions and responses. But this interesting story from IEEE Spectrum describes the next level of this form of Medium As Social Actor (MASA) presence created by an evolving vehicle-based AI that provides real-time, context-dependent guidance in a more natural, conversational manner that humans can better understand, and trust. See the original story for…

[This story from Futurism reports on an interesting but depressing phenomenon that raises serious questions about the perils of medium-as-social-actor presence, as well as human nature. –Matthew] [Image: Getty Images/Futurism] Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them “I threatened to uninstall the app [and] she begged me not to.” By Ashley Bardhan January 18, 2022 Content warning: this story contains descriptions of abusive language and violence. The smartphone app Replika lets users create chatbots, powered by machine learning, that can carry on almost-coherent text conversations. Technically, the chatbots can serve as something approximating a friend or mentor,…

[Tech Crunch provides this description of the origins and current and planned capabilities of Beem’s consumer augmented reality technologies designed to create social presence experiences. See the original story for four more images and a 48 second video (also available via YouTube). –Matthew] Beem, an app that lets you livestream yourself in AR, raises $4 million By Sarah Perez February 17, 2022 What’s the next step beyond Zoom calls and FaceTime? How about beaming yourself from one device to another in real time using augmented reality? That’s the premise behind a startup called Beem, which is today announcing its first…

[This story from Built In provides an entertaining, link-filled history and update on efforts to bring olfactory illusions to presence experiences. See the original story for three more images, and for more information see ISPR Presence News posts from June 2020 (an interview with OVR Technology’s CEO) and September 2020 (regarding the Virtual Mayflower project). –Matthew] The Metaverse, in Glorious Smell-O-Vision! Scent-based immersion could be coming soon. Will the public have a nose for it? Stephen Gossett, a staff reporter covering UX, design and product management. He is the former digital editor at the design magazine Sixtysix. February 8, 2022;…

[Despite recent improvements in virtual reality technology, users’ avatars still don’t have legs due to the difficulty of realistic tracking of full body movements. This CNN report describes the challenges and prospects for progress; note the explicit use of the term presence without the need for a definition, and the references to the uncanny valley at the end. The original version of the story includes a video and more images. –Matthew] [Image: Avatar bodies in Meta’s Horizon Worlds VR app are limited to floating torsos with head, hands, and arms.] Why you can’t have legs in virtual reality (yet) By…

[A new and popular presence experience has opened for a short run in London, as described below in an abridged version of a Broadcast story followed by more details from XR Today. More images and a 38-second trailer are available in both stories (the trailer is also on YouTube). See also the BBC Studios press release. For a story about a related presence experience on a digital billboard in Piccadilly Circle see coverage in The Evening Standard. –Matthew] Behind the scenes at The Green Planet AR Experience Broadcast takes a tour of the AR-driven spin-off of the BBC NHU series…

[This TechCrunch story provides an update on the work of digital humans startup Soul Machines. Particularly notable is a description of the company’s “Levels of Autonomous Animation Framework to Improve Human and Machine Collaboration” (from a free online whitepaper) and its vision of a future in which we all can create realistic digital twins of ourselves to interact with the world in our place. See the original story for four more images. –Matthew] Are lifelike digital humans the future of customer experience? By Rebecca Bellan February 14, 2022 Soul Machines, a New Zealand-based company that uses CGI, AI and natural…

[This story from The Debrief expands on a press release from Edith Cowan University about a new study demonstrating advantages of interacting with an avatar rather than a nonmediated therapist; note the proposed explanations for the key finding in the indented paragraph before the “OUTLOOK…” heading. –Matthew] [Image: Source: Edith Cowan University] MANY PREFER VR TO IN-PERSON THERAPY, NEW RESEARCH SHOWS By Raquel Santos February 15, 2022 Is the idea of openly speaking in front of a therapist too intimidating for you? New research says that you’re not alone in this… and that many people feel more comfortable speaking to…

[The Brookings Institution is a Washington, D.C. “nonprofit public policy organization” whose mission is “to conduct in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national and global level.” Below is the first part of an extensive new Brookings policy brief on the promise and peril of the application of presence-evoking technologies of the ‘metaverse’ in education. See the original, unabridged version on the Brookings website and/or download it in pdf format. –Matthew] A whole new world: Education meets the metaverse By Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Jennifer M. Zosh, Helen Shwe Hadani, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Kevin Clark,…