Tech Trends is an official media partner of VRX 2019 and our readers can get a $200 discount on their ticket price by using the code 5049TECH200
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According to one study, the extended reality (XR) market is forecast to grow to more than $209 billion in the next four years, an 800% increase from their 2018 prediction of $27 billion. Whatever the true figure, it is beyond doubt that this technology is set to revolutionize industries across the world, with more verticals than ever seeking to drive business growth by leveraging its potential benefits.

After consultation with numerous stakeholders, the VRX Conference & Expo 2019 has adopted a new format, focusing on the particular challenges of specific industries
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With a solution-driven agenda focused on enhancing the consumer experience of XR and driving its adoption, the VRX Conference & Expo 2019 will return to San Francisco, taking place December 12-13 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport Hotel. Key virtual and augmented/mixed reality stakeholders will share the visions, challenges and solutions they have encountered, discussing how XR can boost ROI, propel their business forward and engage consumers through immersive, innovative experiences. More than 600 attendees from across 10+ enterprise and consumer verticals, will join a senior speaker line-up focused on filtering through the hype around VR, AR and immersive tech. The VRX Conference & Expo 2019 speaker line-up includes senior executives from HTC Vive, ExxonMobil, DreamWorks, Paramount Pictures, HP, Survios, Nestlé, Bayer Pharma USA and others.

The VRX Conference & Expo 2019 speaker line-up includes senior executives from HTC Vive, ExxonMobil, DreamWorks, Paramount Pictures, HP, Survios, Nestlé, Bayer Pharma USA and others
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Aiming to connect established technology leaders with those just embarking on their extended reality (XR) journey through high-quality content and networking, VRX 2019 will see over 80 speakers from across more than 10 industry verticals take to the stage. Through a unique blend of interactive sessions, case studies, seminars, and live demonstrations, the VRX agenda will explore how XR can bring value to brands and customers alike, engaging consumers through immersive and innovative experiences and discuss current challenges and solutions to the uptake of XR.

VRX 2019 will see over 80 speakers from across more than 10 industry verticals take to the stage
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The agenda will cover both enterprise and consumer XR, including AEC, automotive, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, gaming, film, TV and beyond, with the underlying aim to go beyond the hype of XR to understand what are the keys to mass adoption and apply cross-industry knowledge to boost business productivity.

The full speaker list can be accessed on the VRX website. Among those confirmed to speak at VRX 2019 are Jae Lake (Lead VR Specialist, Expedia), Raj Pallapothu (mHealth Global Business Lead, Bayer Pharma US) and Shelley Peterson (Principal Investor – Augmented & Mixed Reality, Lockheed Martin), as well as:

• Fern Nibauer-Cohen, Director, Patient Engagement and Business Development, Penn Medicine
• Kyle Daughtry, Immersive Technology Design Lead, ExxonMobil
• Joel Breton, President Sixense Studios, Sixense Enterprises Inc.
• Anne Stephens, Global Vice President of Category Expansion, ABInBev

Access the full speaker list here

“Unquestionably the best conference of its kind I’ve been to. The quality of the presenters, depth of thinking, and real-world experience on hand was exceptional.”– Skip D’Amico, Global Manager, Digital Innovation, Cadillac

This year’s event focuses on customer-centricity to drive consumer and enterprise adoption. With 8 new deep-dive seminars into core market growth areas, attendees will have the chance to hear from leading end users in each of these segments and debate with like-minded individuals, on top of the usual thought-leading topics around the latest hardware, software, content and market disruptors.

The extended reality (XR) market is forecast to grow to more than $209 billion in the next four years
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After consultation with numerous stakeholders, the VRX Conference & Expo 2019 has adopted a new format, focusing on the particular challenges of specific industries, rather than solely high-level content. With detailed case studies covering industries from entertainment, energy, electronics and more, attendees from all verticals will benefit from the detail and insight on offer.

“It provided some of the best access to large clients of any event we have attended. It was easy to meet and have impactful conversations. Definitely having many follow ups as a result.” – Kyle Jackson, CEO, Talespin

VRX Conference & Expo 2019 will return to San Francisco, taking place December 12–13 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport Hotel
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This year at VRX 2019, we are focused on putting customers first to drive consumer and enterprise adoption of XR. With 8 new deep-dive seminars into core market growth areas, attendees will have the chance to hear from leading end users in each of these segments and debate with like-minded individuals, on top of the usual thought-leading topics around the latest hardware, software, content and market disruptors.

With detailed case studies covering industries from entertainment, energy, electronics and more, attendees from all verticals will benefit from the detail and insight on offer
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As the global XR industry continues its rapid expansion, the VRX Conference & Expo 2019 is dedicated to providing a forum for debating the crucial hardware and software requirements for seamless user experience, helping businesses to look ahead, build project pipelines and ultimately drive innovation.

As the global XR industry continues its rapid expansion, the VRX Conference & Expo 2019 provides a forum for debating the crucial hardware and software requirements for seamless user experience
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Tech Trends is an official media partner of VRX 2019 and our readers can get a $200 discount on their ticket price by using the code 5049TECH200

Tech Trends offers a broad range of Digital Consultancy services to guide companies, individuals and brands in effectively leveraging existing and emerging technologies in their business strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Tech Trends at #VRX2019 appeared first on Tech Trends.

As with any novel and paradigm-shifting technology, the initial boom of virtual and artificial reality (VR/AR) has seen a vast array of industries attempting to leverage its benefits, from entertainment to product design, marketing to construction.

Research from ABI shows that the global enterprise VR training market is expected to grow to $6.3 billion by 2022, up from $216 million in 2018
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While some applications of XR have proved themselves less promising than others, research from ABI shows that the global enterprise VR training market is expected to grow to $6.3 billion by 2022, up from $216 million in 2018; a vast leap by any standards. Certainly, as the interconnectedness and digitization of our world increase, the skills required by future workforces will be markedly different from those before, necessarily becoming broader, more technical and quicker to evolve.

The burgeoning growth of the immersive learning sector has already thrown up several key benefits
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The burgeoning growth of the immersive learning sector has already thrown up several key benefits: with remote training possible, physical distance between experts and businesses has been all but eradicated; real-life situations can be mirrored, allowing employees to reach greater skill levels in less time; operational costs (from transportation, equipment and labor hours) can be greatly lowered; and through tracking (of behavior, eye movement or gestures), the gathering of data promises vastly enriched analytical capabilities. With such potential on the horizon, it is essential that organizations manage the process of leveraging XR technologies effectively, or risk falling behind as others take the lead.

As the interconnectedness and digitization of our world increase, the skills required by future workforces will be markedly different from those before, necessarily becoming broader, more technical and quicker to evolve
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To address these opportunities and more, VR Intelligence are hosting an exclusive webinar, ‘How VR & AR are Changing Training, Education & Worker Guidance’, taking place Wednesday, July 31^, 2019, at 9:00am PT/12:00pm ET/5:00pm BST.

With XR, real-life situations can be mirrored, allowing employees to reach greater skill levels in less time
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Moderator Amy Peck, CEO & Founder, EndeavorVR will be joined by John Cogliandro (Senior Engineer, Special Projects, Raytheon), John O’Shea (Head of VR & AR Enterprise Applications, Applied Materials), Mark Lee (Board Member, Immersive Learning Research Network and Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University) and Michael Bloor (Co-Founder & CRO, iQ3Connect, Inc). The webinar will explore how companies are using XR technologies to improve training across different organizations and what impacts they are seeing on training efficiency, ROI and improved employee experiences.

VR Intelligence are hosting an exclusive webinar: How VR & AR are Changing Training, Education & Worker Guidance
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Sign up for this webinar today to explore:

• In which industries are VR & AR having the biggest impact on training and worker guidance?
• Why the changing workforce now expects better technology-led training, and how VR is enabling this
• How are education providers increasingly using immersive technologies and experiences to improve & accelerate learning?
• What benefits can be had in terms of time and cost savings, and how are companies measuring this?
• What’s the place of AR – is it best placed for training, real-time worker guidance, or both?

Register for the webinar today

The webinar will explore how companies are using XR technologies to improve training across different organizations and what impacts they are seeing on training efficiency, ROI and improved employee experiences
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Those who cannot join live will be sent the recordings once the webinar has run.

This webinar is being run in association with VR Intelligence’s VRX Conference & Expo, which takes place December 12-13, 2019, at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport Hotel. Expecting more than 600 senior attendees from across gaming, entertainment, healthcare, retail, automotive industries and more, VRX is the world’s premier B2B immersive tech event for those wishing to use XR to boost ROI, propel their business forward and engage consumers through immersive, innovative experiences.

This webinar is being run in association with the VRX Conference & Expo, which takes place December 12-13, 2019 in San Francisco
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Tech Trends is an official media partner of VRX 2019

Tech Trends offers a broad range of Digital Consultancy services to guide companies, individuals and brands in effectively leveraging existing and emerging technologies in their business strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Exploring Immersive Technology in Training and Education appeared first on Tech Trends.

Immersive Technology turns out to be the perfect medium for ARtistic expression and exploring identity.

Growing up in an immigrant family of Chinese descent and living in Oakland, California, Estella Tse recalls that she was always navigating a conflict between her traditional heritage – which mainly told her to “follow the rules” – and her more liberal American upbringing, which encouraged individualism and freedom of expression. Art, she explains, was a form of escapism as well as a way she found to reconcile the two worlds she was caught between.

Estella Tse explores the intersection between art, technology, and impactful storytelling using immersive technologies such as VR and AR
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Tse’s professional background is as diverse as her heritage, including web design, front-end development, sociology, illustration, and visual design. Through her work, she now explores the intersection between art, technology, and impactful storytelling using immersive technologies such as VR and AR.

Tse’s professional background is as diverse as her heritage, including web design, front-end development, sociology, illustration, and visual design
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Designers can easily create immersive content that can then be brought into Xcode for further refinement and development
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She participated in Adobe’s Immersive Artist in Residency Program where she was given early access to Project Aero, Adobe’s new augmented reality (AR) authoring tool and multi-platform system that aims to provide a user-friendly and intuitive interface for artists, designers and developers to create immersive content.

With Project Aero Adobe’s aims to provide a user-friendly and intuitive interface for artists, designers and developers to create immersive content
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“AR content development today requires a combination of creativity and technical skills,” says Abhay Parasnis, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Adobe. “Project Aero will deliver a system for both developers and creatives to build simple AR scenes and experiences leveraging Apple’s ARKit. Designers can easily create immersive content that can then be brought into Xcode for further refinement and development.”

AR content development today requires a combination of creativity and technical skills
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I wanted to make a piece that could really justify the use of augmented reality as an art medium
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Her work was recently showcased alongside that of 14 other artists at the Festival of the Impossible in San Francisco, where her piece – half of which existed in the physical world and half of which could only be seen in Augmented Reality – was appropriately called “two sides of the same coin,” and was developed using Project Aero.

“I wanted to make a piece that could really justify the use of augmented reality as an art medium,” she explains “As a designer who loves exploring the intersections between new technology and art, AR allows me to express myself in a brand new and exciting ways. I strive to make art that is meaningful, inspiring, and uplifting, in hopes that viewers feel less alone in their struggles, too. AR allows me to do just that.”

Creating for AR is more like creating a sculpture to be placed in a courtyard or someone's living room — I have to consider how and where my viewer will be experiencing my piece
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Blending realities to create art requires a different approach and a brand new way of thinking, yet Tse says she loves the challenge:

“It forces me to be more thoughtful in the ways I create art. Coming from traditional and digital 2D illustration background, AR is more like sculpting and environment design. Creating for AR is more like creating a sculpture to be placed in a courtyard or someone’s living room — I have to consider how and where my viewer will be experiencing my piece. Unlike virtual reality which removes you completely from the real world, augmented reality begs for interaction with the real world. How does my piece relate or conflict with the space or manner in which it’ll be viewed? I’ve had to put on my gallery show and exhibit designer hats to achieve a more holistic viewing experience.”

To deliver on the promise of AR requires a fundamental rethinking of what it means to create with new tools, technologies and interaction models
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There’s also an additional layer of social interactivity that AR provides, she says, which spurs people on to share the content with friends and on social media:”Even with my piece, designed to be a static gallery piece, so many people took pictures under my phoenix as shown through the iPad. People also wanted to explore and discover the piece together. I think as multi-user AR becomes more ubiquitous, we’ll be seeing very exciting art pieces that will play with multiple perceptions and interactive explorations of the art.”

“We see the potential of immersive design to enable new forms of creative expression, customer experiences, and business models that we can’t even imagine today, but to deliver on the promise of AR requires a fundamental rethinking of what it means to create with new tools, technologies and interaction models” Parasnis adds.

There's an additional layer of social interactivity that AR provides which spurs people on to share the content with friends and on social media
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Tools like Project Aero will, Tse believes, make the process of creating immersive art more accessible, and allow more creators to jump on board and define what this space might be, and that space might just turn out to be a lot more open and diverse than more established media and creative industries.

This is an exhilarating time to be an artist
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“There’s a huge thirst in the artist community for pieces with movement, depth, interactivity. From static paintings, to moving pictures and film, and now sculptures pop out of the canvas and frames — this is an exhilarating time to be an artist. Like new mediums that have come before, AR needs artists and creative energy to push the boundaries of what this technology can actually do. As a woman, as a POC, there are all sorts of opportunities I’ll be allowed in a new space that I wouldn’t have had in a more established space,” she concludes.

This article was originally published on VRScout

Artist’s AR Exhibit Shows Two Sides Of The Same Reality via @alicebonasio https://t.co/kiNELGnYvd pic.twitter.com/BKt3of2nNr

— VRScout (@VRScout) August 11, 2018

For companies looking to get into Immersive technologies such as VR/AR/MR/XR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance and support on how best to incorporate these into your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Creating Two Sides of the Same Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.

How Uber’s cutthroat ethos proved a liability and is leaving it vulnerable to competitors

One sunny morning outside the Ferry Building in San Francisco, I was about to order an Uber when an over-friendly guy in a black t-shirt with a pink mustache logo approached me. My initial reaction was to tell this weirdo to leave me alone, but then he offered me a $50 Lyft voucher. Having established that this was a legit weirdo, and since I had heard a lot of people mentioning that company in the city, I decided to download it and request a Lyft instead. I haven’t opened my Uber app since.

I had been using Uber a lot lately, with no complaints whatsoever. In Brazil the app worked perfectly and was invariably a third (or less) of the price of a cab. My rides usually arrived within a minute or so of my request, cars were clean and well-maintained and the drivers were always ridiculously nice. I traveled a lot with my elderly grandfather who took a very long time to get in and out of the car, but at no point were we rushed, and most drivers actively offered help, as well as bottled water and candy for good measure. I felt spoiled even in 10-minute rides which cost 7 Reais (less than $2).

With Uber, there is a higher price to pay, but it’s not the user who pays it
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During my trip to San Francisco the following week it was the same drill. Friendly drivers, super-quick service, really cheap fares. It was almost too good to be true.

And that’s the problem. When it comes to Uber, there is a higher price to pay, but it’s not the user who pays it. I chatted to dozens of those friendly drivers and the stories were invariably the same: They loved the flexibility, and didn’t mind paying a cut of their earnings, but they felt that things had definitely got progressively worse since they joined.

I might have tried Lyft because of the $50 voucher, but I stayed because of the balloons. On the app you not only get to rate your driver, but you have the option to give them a tip. Tipping then triggers an animation where pink balloons float around their smiling profile picture, giving you a warm, fuzzy feeling. In Brazil I had tried to tip my Uber drivers (specially the $2 rides) but they adamantly refused. Drivers have to give a quarter of their gross takings to Uber, and bear all the costs such as fuel, wear and tear, insurance, etc. themselves, which made me wonder how on earth it was viable for them to charge me so little. I actually started to feel guilty using the service, like I was taking advantage.

I started to feel guilty using Uber's service, like I was taking advantage
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That was specially true once you started talking to people about their experiences with Uber: “They’re constantly changing the rules,” one driver told me in São Paulo “at first you needed a certain type of vehicle to join, so I invested a lot of money in a new car, but soon after, they lowered the requirements and flooded the city with drivers, so the fares dropped in price dramatically, at the same time as the Uber fees went up.”

San Francisco drivers had similar complaints: “They’re always inventing new ways of squeezing you and increasing the fees, and it is getting to the point where it’s not really worth my time,” said one of my Uber drivers.

I tried Lyft because of the $50 voucher, but I stayed for the balloons
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All that made me receptive to the idea of switching, but the proof, as they say, was in the pudding. If Lyft had been a crap app I would have stuck with Uber (it is so damn convenient!). But as it turns out, it took less than 3 minutes to download Lyft on my phone, setup my profile and payment method, redeem my discount voucher, and request my first ride.

My Lyft drivers were noticeably happy with their lot. Many, in fact, were Uber deserters. One driver told me:

“The last straw was when Uber started inventing all these mandatory courses that you needed to go on, and they charged each driver over a hundred dollars for it, plus you have to do it on your own time. There’s always something else you have to pay them for, you never know where you stand.”

During the next ride, when asked if he had ever tried driving with Uber, my driver said he had been with Lyft from the beginning, and stayed because the terms were fair, and they made him feel appreciated. “When I completed 1000 rides with them, they sent me this,” he said enthusiastically pointing to the 1K Club jacket he was wearing. “I now did over 4000 rides with them.”

There is no doubt that the business model that Uber pioneered is fantastic, and that it’s here to stay. It fulfills a real need for users and provides drivers with a flexible source of income. But Uber’s mistake is in acting like its first-mover advantage is unassailable. There are plenty of competitors like Lyft cropping up all over the place, and the fact that the business model is proven (and there is still enormous scope for growth) means that they’re attracting huge investment.

Like so many other tech companies, Uber’s greatest mistake is acting like its first-mover advantage is unassailable
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As a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out, Lyft’s latest $1Billion funding round is fuelling the spending spree that paid for pink-moustache-t-shirt guy to hand me the $50 worth of discounted rides in San Francisco, and is helping them quickly gain market share.

Uber is a very different product from, say, Facebook or LinkedIn, where there is a high cost in terms of time and hassle attached to switching to another platform. All it takes is for an Uber user to download a different app and give it a try. Add that to the fact that they are losing drivers due to their bullish money-grabbing ethos, and you can see how the disruptors might soon become the disrupted.

The disruptors might soon become the disrupted
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Greediness is never an attractive quality, but in this case it might actually be hurting Uber’s business in the long-run, and it’s a reflection of their broader confrontational mindset. Watching the endless battles the company fights with governments, regulators, taxi unions, and their own drivers, that the huge budgets they dedicate to PR, advertising and legal fees would be better spent on giving drivers a fairer deal, or even showing some appreciation with a jacket here and there. I always found that a little kindness goes a long way, and building a community is worth more to a company in the long term than desperately grabbing for every penny RIGHT NOW.

This is specially true when you’re selling an user experience, where price is only part of the equation, and building a rapport with your driver is a real plus. Over the past few weeks I was driven by an Afghani who used to be a translator for US special forces in Kabul, a cool California dude who was “in the Coffee business” and gave us the best insider recommendations of where to go in the city, and another guy who was a part-time archaeologist on his way to a dig in Jerusalem, and who incidentally used to be in what he called “the security business” where he used to break into events such as movie premieres to expose the vulnerabilities of the system. Like with Airbnb, social interaction plays a huge part in the user experience, and your platform is only as valuable as the people it attracts — and retains.

Social interaction plays a huge part in the user experience, and your platform is only as valuable as the people it attracts — and retains
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Maybe I’m in the minority and most people are just happy to get a good deal, but I really don’t think so. After all, we buy fair-trade products, pay extra for cruelty-free labels, and donate to charity. Call me naïve, but I believe that — all other things being equal — most of us would take the option to be a little bit nicer to our fellow humans if given the chance. After all, you’re still getting a great deal, even if it’s slightly less cheap than the bastard option.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Uber v Lyft: How Playing Nice Can Be a Winning Strategy appeared first on Tech Trends.

Humans have always used technology to tell stories, so does VR actually change anything?

Few things have the power to catapult you back in time quite as quickly as the stuff you played with as a child, so when I accidentally wandered into San Francisco’s Musée Mécanique with my husband, it instantly felt like home. Just a really weird version of it.

The place was crammed with hundreds of vintage arcade and fun fair machines of every description, all fully functional and many of which — as the signs helpfully point out — “older than you’ll ever be”.

The signs point out that these machines are older than you’ll ever be
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Some, like the Indiana Jones Pinball machine, Alien Bug Hunt and Star Warsflight simulator were exactly the same as what we used to play. Others, likeAsteroids, Pong and Pac-Man peaked slightly before our time but were so iconic as to instantly resonate, especially when the music and sound effects kick in.

Humans have always used technology to tell stories
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A few, however, were just plain creepy. I shared a moment of fascination with a little girl as she watched a marionette of a crying baby being held up by another doll — nothing actually happened apart from the watching girl getting increasingly freaked out — and with another quarter I bought a drink for the aptly named “Drinking Man”– the machine featuring a large doll of a drunkard that was specially commissioned to “reflect a favourite English pastime — an evening at the Pub”.

The machine was commissioned to reflect the favourite English pastime — an evening at the Pub
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Walk a bit further and you are confronted with “The Flasher” which gives you lewd, raised-eyebrow looks before starting to lift his shirt… I moved on swiftly at that point, to have my fortune told by a gypsy in a machine straight from the movie Big and to giggle at the dubiously named “Bimbo Box”.

#WTF??

What really caught my eye though, was the number of relatively unassuming machines featuring stereoscopic photographs. These have been around since the 19th Century and were early attempts at taking and displaying images in 3D. (Fun fact: Queen guitarist Brian May is one of the world’s greatest collectors of this type of material, so much so that he bought and now runs the London Stereoscopic Company. )

Brian May from Queen is one of the worlds greatest collectors of stereoscopic photographs
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I had been thinking about Virtual Reality a lot, since I was in San Francisco interviewing companies about the exciting present and future of the technology. So looking at all those Victorian VR machines — where you can view photos of the great fire which followed the 1906 earthquake, or even indulge in some naughty voyeurism watching models undress — it struck me that we’re forever trying to stretch the limits of what technology can do to bring human imagination to life.

Humans are always stretching the limits of technology when it comes to bringing our creative visions to life
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As Jeremy Bailenson, a Stanford Professor who has researched Virtual Reality for over a decade points out:

“Virtual reality is nothing new. It’s just a new label… throughout human history people have put media to work to enhance mind-wandering. All along, we’ve combined arts and science to produce these mind-wandering tools.”

As with most things, we can probably do a lot better going forward if we learn the lessons from the past, and technology is no different. The problem is that we tend to treat old technology as disposable; something that becomes instantly worthless the moment something better, faster and shinier comes along. There is often very little study of what made those earlier versions succeed or fail, and I believe that those looking to finally make Virtual Reality a pervasive technology would do well to consider this. In the past decades we’ve seen exciting developments in VR technology fizzle out because they turned out to be no more than gimmicks, and gimmicks wear out fast.

We tend to treat old technology as disposable; something that becomes instantly worthless the moment something better, faster and shinier comes along

Funnily enough, some of those fun fair machines were better at telling stories than much of the fancy stuff that followed, and the sheer amount of quarters we left behind at the museum is a testament to how effective those experiences still are. If the stories and the context are interesting enough, your brain makes up the difference, otherwise nobody would ever read a book. And as any Star Wars fan will tell you, the secret sauce is not a ton of special effects, it’s the story. That’s why most people (with any sense) vastly prefer the earlier films to the later ones *

Those funfair machines were better at telling stories than much of the fancy stuff that followed, and the sheer amount of quarters we left behind is a testament to how effective those experiences still are
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The secret sauce lies not in special effects, but in the story
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Looking at Virtual Reality technology, I have no doubt we’re in a position to do many amazing things. Whether your average person chooses to engage with those experiences, however, will entirely depend on the stories we tell with the medium, which is why it’s too early to make that call until we see what content actually gets made. The early signs are good though, with developers thinking beyond gaming to applications of VR in education, healthcare, and yes, even pornography. As we’ve seen with the growth curve of the Internet and Mobile, it is only when the entire spectrum of human experience is catered for and titillated by a technology that it really takes off. If it cracks this, VR could well be next.

Only when a technology caters for the entire spectrum of human experience does it really take off
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*Arguably the latest installment in the Star Wars saga manages the coup of bringing together both elements, but I’ll leave that question open to discussion.

For companies looking to get into VR/AR/MR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance on how these technologies can enhance and support your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Back to the Future: How Virtual Reality is Nothing New appeared first on Tech Trends.

How far are we from realising the vision that Ernie Cline set out in Ready Player One for the Virtual Reality classroom of the future?

Not to sound too creepy here, but… I want to play a game. See if you can spot which of the quotes below refers to a long-standing commercially available product, which talks about a soon-to-be-launched platform, and which is pure Science Fiction:

How far are we from realising the vision that Ernie Cline set out in Ready Player One for the Virtual Reality classroom of the future?
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1 -Somebody will create an education hub where all the schools and classes that you can visit are interconnected, much like a website. There will be this network of cross-linked experiences, and… POOF! I can just teleport from one to the other.

2 — Users could alter the content of the virtual world or create entirely new ones… you could create your own private planet, build a virtual mansion on it, furnish and decorate it however you liked, and invite a few thousand friends over for a party. And those friends could be in a dozen different time zones, spread all over the globe.

3 — Nursing students assessing the virtual patient click on an object and view the patient’s information on a notecard. The students are given choices on how to proceed and communicate with each other within the virtual world to determine how to prioritize care and assign tasks. It allows you to create situations that, over the course of their training they may never see, something wacky like somebody coming in with a ball pen hammer stuck in their forehead.

*********** Scroll down for answers ***********

 

1= Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, which launches its Virtual Reality platform Project Sansar later this year.

2= Ernest Cline in his book Ready Player One, a Science Fiction novel currently being adapted to the big screen by Steven Spielberg.

3= Patricia Abbott, Associate Professor at University of Michigan, who used Linden Lab’s existing Second Life platform to train nursing students.

Looking at the quotes above, I’m struck by how much Ebbe Altberg’s vision of a Virtual Reality education hub reflects the malleable online world of the OASIS in Ernest Cline’s hit novel Ready Player One.

To take what had previously been the preserve of the technically gifted and gleefully throw it to the hungry masses
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In RP1, teenager Wade Watts lives in a dystopia where most people escape their bleak existences by constantly logging into the OASIS, a simulation that has replaced reality to such an extent that even the schooling system has moved online. But that’s no bad thing as far as Wade is concerned:

In the OASIS, no one could tell I was fat, that I had acne, or that I wore the same shabby clothes every week. Bullies couldn’t pelt me with spit balls or pummel me by the bike rack after school. No one could even touch me. In here, I was safe.

In a poverty-stricken world, technology ensured that education, at least was universally accessible:
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There were hundreds of school campuses here on Ludus, spread out evenly across the planet’s surface. The schools were all identical, because the same construction code was copied and pasted into a different location whenever a new school was needed. And since the buildings were just pieces of software, their design wasn’t limited by monetary constraints, or even by the laws of physics. So every school was a grand palace of learning, with polished marble hallways, cathedral-like classrooms, zero-g gymnasiums, and virtual libraries containing every (school board-approved) book ever written.

(Extract: Ready Player One) 

It's striking how this vision chimes with Ernest Cline’s OASIS, the malleable online world of hit novel RP1
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In this vision there is still, however, a need for teachers, but the software makes their job much easier too:

Unlike their real-world counterparts, most OASIS public school teachers seemed to genuinely enjoy their job, probably because they didn’t have to spend half their time acting as babysitters and disciplinarians. The OASIS software took care of that, ensuring that students remained quiet and in their seats. All the teachers had to do was teach. It was also a lot easier for online teachers to hold their students’ attention, because here in the OASIS, the classrooms were like holodecks. Teachers could take their students on a virtual field trip every day, without ever leaving the school grounds.

(Extract: Ready Player One) 

In this vision there is still a need for teachers, but the software makes their job a lot easier
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During the World History lesson that morning, Mr Avenovich loaded up a simulation so that our class could witness the discovery of King Tut’s tomb by archaeologists in Egypt in AD 1922. (The day before, we’d visited the same spot in 1334 BC and had seen Tutankhamen’s empire in all its glory.) In my next class, Biology, we travelled through a human heart and watched it pumping from the inside, just like in that old movie Fantastic Voyage. In Art class we toured the Louvre while all our avatars wore silly berets. In my Astronomy class, we visited each of Jupiter’s moons.

(Extract: Ready Player One) 

Yet before dismissing such visions as Science Fiction, it’s worth noting that this type of interaction has been happening inside Second Life – the online open world created by Altberg’s company Linden Lab – for over 13 years.

Wendy Keeney-Kennicutt is a professor of chemistry at Texas A&M. In 2008 she created a virtual lab within SL where her students could conduct experiments and visualize the molecules in ways that would have been difficult, dangerous, or downright impossible in the real world.

These virtual classrooms have already been functioning in Second Life for over 13 years
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“Originally I got into Second Life because of the 3-D nature of molecules. People have a real hard time seeing 2-D pictures in a book and seeing a 3-D picture in their heads. That’s what chemistry is all about.”

According to Altberg, students attending the virtual lab actually out-performed their real classroom counterparts because the enhanced interaction helped them retain the information better.

Students attending the virtual lab actually out-performed their real classroom counterparts
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“You can read about something, you can watch videos, but when you DO something… That just sticks with you in a completely different way. In VR I can pour this liquid into that liquid and see what happens. If the nurse screws up, the patient doesn’t die.”

Linden Lab has always been ahead of the curve, sometimes too much so. At a time when TheFacebook was merely a glint the eye of a teenage Mark Zuckerberg, they were launching an entire world to let people socialise online.

At a time when TheFacebook was a mere glint in Zuckerberg's eye, Second Life was letting people socialize online
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Yet Second Life suffered from technical limitations, a walled-garden structure that made it difficult to invite others to share experiences, and a steep learning curve that meant you had to spend several hours navigating your way around the system before you could do anything.

That’s not to say that it was a failure, however, far from it. As it approaches its thirteenth birthday, Second Life is profitable and still attracts around a million users a month. This enables Linden Lab to fund the development of Sansar themselves – no mean feat for a technology company. Perhaps even more valuable, however, is the accumulated experience and feedback gathered from all those long-term users over the years. Nobody in that space can claim quite as much experience of running a large-scale open virtual world, and monetizing it.

What unites all these virtual classroom imaginings and experiences is the idea that play is a cornerstone of learning
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What unites all these virtual classroom imaginings and experiences is the idea that play is a cornerstone of learning. Game studies, also known as ludology, explores the theory behind this concept, and I have long believed that technology such as videogames can and should be used in learning, as they have enormous potential to help students develop a broad range of critical skills.

It is puzzling to see how people often think of learning and play as being not only separate, but polar opposites. In Ready Player One, however, a significant point is made of the fact that the word Ludus means both “school” and “game” or “play” (in fact *** SPOILER ALERT*** it is the first crucial clue in the “Easter Egg Hunt” around which the plot revolves).

It goes beyond semantics though. Humans, like other mammals, are hard-wired to learn through playing, especially when they’re young (if you’ve ever watched a puppy play-fighting or a kitten chasing a fly you’ll know what I mean). Even as we grow older, however, it is still easier to learn in playful environments. This is now so widely accepted that there is a booming industry in online brain training resources such as Lumosity, which is projected to hit $6 billion by 2020.

It is puzzling to see how people often think of learning and play as being not only separate, but polar opposites
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Patricia Abbott – the author of the third quote in the quiz at the start of this article – believes that using Second Life’s gaming-type environment was crucial in helping students at the University of Michigan School of Nursing learn. Not only were they able to deal with scenarios they might not have come across otherwise, but they – perhaps paradoxically – felt much more free to be themselves.

“Because they’re doing this as their avatar or their alter ego—there’s this anonymity. There’s a sense of having a little bit of protection because I’m not putting myself out there, I’m not so vulnerable, so I’m willing to take more of a risk.”

And taking risks is a crucial part of creative thinking. The ability to look at a problem for all angles and think outside the box – to use one’s imagination, in other words – is something that we’re most likely to learn through play. It seems therefore strange to see a movement – at least in the UK – towards more rigid testing of pupils at an ever-earlier age.

We shouldn’t crush creativity at its most fertile stage only to re-teach it at university level
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Such is the concern that some parents recently kept their children out of school for a day in protest of the new testing regime. Surely it would make more sense to empower teachers to creatively use all resources available – including technology –  to foster those skills. If we recognize the value – commercial and otherwise – of the creative industries, we shouldn’t crush creativity at its most fertile stage only to re-teach it at university level. But I digress.

We should empower teachers to foster creativity using all available resources - including technology
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While the virtual classroom will soon become a viable reality, it remains to be seen whether the vision offered up by both Cline and Altberg will materialize. Whatever shape it takes, however, it is likely that Virtual Reality will make the classroom of the future a place where the lines between work, play, learning and living become increasingly blurred. And I agree with Wade in that this might turn out to not be such a bad thing after all.

The virtual classroom will soon become a viable reality
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Tech Trends’  Virtual Reality Consultancy services offers support for companies looking to enhance brand strategy with immersive technologies such as Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Ready Player Learn appeared first on Tech Trends.

Academia.edu was founded in 2008 with the mission of making knowledge more accessible and fostering discussion amongst scholars.

10 years later the platform hosts over 12 million Open Access papers and has a global community of more than 35 million registered users.

There are a lot of different types of academic output, but there’s no real incentive to share those
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Last week we stopped by their offices in San Francisco to talk to CEO and Founder Richard Price about what’s next for them, and where they see the future of academic research and education going.

“We eventually want to see all research being made freely available,” says Price. That’s an estimated 65 million papers, so he admits there’s still a way to go. The other part of his mission is to foster meaningful discussions around those papers.

Many people don’t actually read the papers they cite, so citations are not always an accurate measure of impact
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The challenge for academic social networks such as Academia.edu and its main competitors — ResearchGate and Mendeley — has always been to foster these broader conversations outside the pre-existing boundaries of departments and institutions. Academia tends to be insular and scholars are justifiably protective of their research, which can hinder openness and collaboration. Arguably, however, the next generation of researchers, having grown up in a world of social media and pervasive sharing, will find this much more natural.

The next generation of researchers growing up with social media might find sharing much more natural
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One of the features they are piloting to encourage these exchanges is called Sessions, where users can upload a draft version of their paper and invite others to discuss it within a closed group for a period of 20 days. There are about 6000 sessions happening at any one time within the site, some with as many as 1000 members (although the average group size is around 50).

“The other tool we’ve developed allows a subset of authoritative users to review papers and recommend them as valid contributions to their field of research. “Currently this is limited to a very small group of users (less than .1%), who must have a PhD and have been published, plus have experience of the peer-review process, but we are looking at expanding that pool.”

The measure of importance of an academic paper is usually tied to the number of times it gets cited, the so-called “Impact Factor”, yet price believes that platforms such as Academia.edu will allow for more granular assessment of the real-world impact that research has. It’s a complex matter, because even citations can fail to give you an accurate picture of the credibility of a particular paper, as many people don’t actually read the papers they cite.

“We need to get a lot better at asking — and answering — the question of what do academics actually think about this paper,” says Price. “I’m a huge believer in Altmetrics, and think the new measures of impact such as Author Rank and Paper Rank will become a lot more important in years to come.”

Part of that means moving beyond the PDF as the standard unit of scholarly output. There are a lot of different types of files that get produced, such as data-sets, code, blog posts, etc. Yet there is no real incentive for sharing these As we move beyond the impact factor we will get a lot more granularity and that will help paint a bigger and more accurate picture of what knowledge is relevant and credible, and to better connect people with the knowledge they need.

We don’t know how big the market is, because academic papers haven’t been openly accessible before
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The company so far raised around $17 Million and is working on ways to monetize some of its features while keeping the core platform and its content free. Yet the size of its potential user-base is actually hard to estimate, since its appeal extends beyond the traditional scholarly community.

“Only about half of our users are academics per se. The rest are teachers, diplomats, accountants, lawyers… We have investment bankers and African farmers coming to the site for the most diverse reasons, it’s really for anybody with an interest in academic research, and we don’t know how big that market is, because papers haven’t been Open Access on this scale before.”

Some of the specific use cases he mentions include a teacher using papers to support an argument for adopting a different methodology in the classroom, or a farmer looking at increasing their yield by learning about new variety of maize. And he shows me a quote that illustrates what impact this access to knowledge can have in people’s lives:

“May Allah bless you as long as the East Wind blows and shakes the branches in the distant meadows,” reads the lyric message from a grateful user in Singapore. “What you have created in academia.edu is arguably the best tool for scholars and academics. I pray to God that he provides you with all the wealth and knowledge necessary for you to keep doing what you are doing. A thousand thanks and gratitude.”

In a few years, Price hopes that all new papers published will be open and freely available so that anyone with an Internet connection can read them.

“When I was at school I only used the occasional basic AltaVista search, but in future I see a world where a kid in China interested in lithium ion batteries can find the latest research published on that subject, read it on her mobile translated automatically into Mandarin, and be able to see which of those papers are ranked as most relevant by people respected in that field, so that she instantly knows what’s most relevant to her. That’s what I want Academia.edu to make possible.”

In a few years, Price hopes that all new papers published will be open and freely available so that anyone with an Internet connection can read them
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Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Sharing Knowledge Beyond the Ivory Tower appeared first on Tech Trends.