Defeating Our Tyrannical Energy-Harvesting Overlords
The progression of augmented and virtual reality is, as one of our presenters pointed out in his Virtual Reality presentation, quite terrifying. But it’s also thrilling. Merging digital and physical worlds together to create a cohesive platform that gives presenters and users abilities that humans dream of; manipulating objects with the flick of the wrist from across the room, adding wicked cool animations to a carefully crafted presentation and activating them with your eyeballs, or simply exploring a digital world that models places you’ve never been or that don’t even exist! It’s an opportunity for creators to literally make worlds with everything included — sound, sight, movement — and one day maybe even touch and smell.
What comes with this line of thinking is the concern of being stuck in something like the Matrix, but why ruin cool advancements with thoughts of cruel robot/alien/cyborg/corgi overlords? We aren’t quite to that point yet (probably), so while we wait for the technology to catch up with our dreams it’s worthwhile to explore the tools developers have already come up with. In the brief article by Adrielle Pardes “SORRY, POWERPOINT: THE SLIDE DECK OF THE FUTURE WILL BE IN AR” we get a look at what Arvai, the developers of Prezi, are up to (2017). And it looks like the team is working hard to not only knock PowerPoint slide decks off the map (haven’t even gotten close, yet), but to also bring tools to people that allow them to enter their presentations (2017). Uses for this are still in the design phase, but the basic concept is to help tele-presenters engage with their audience better by being visually present as they speak with their decks available (2017).
One of the chapters of Play/Write really spoke to the idea of what augmented reality can really start to be (which Arvai is doing, not virtual reality). Augmented reality incorporates digital and other tools into creating a parallel truth to the natural world. Though this sounds out there, the idea is actually pretty simple. Developers are using digital and other means to alter a participants perceptions and beliefs, but up to this point it’s all with the participant’s knowledge. In the case of Arvai, audience members are aware that the presenter cannot command weird shapes and digital images to appear in real life without the help of a computer or other device. In the case of Jill Morris’s chapter in Play/Write “Narrative Realities and Alternate Zombies: A Student-Centered Alternate Reality” a student-led project to create a living narrative that exists in the same world as real-life, the group tried to play the alternate reality ‘game’ off as real until the point where students became scared and were let in on the secret; it’s all made up (2016).
That ends up being the main problem with alternate/virtual reality — not knowing what is and isn’t real makes people uncomfortable. That’s why Arvai’s main focus is on making it very obvious that the digital aspect of adding people into their presentations is a separate, but useful, tool versus trying to trick/deceive people (2017).
It’s apparent that alternate/augmented reality is making its way into popular culture with how prominent Snapchat and Facebook are with their facial filters. But the other important area to consider in this general genre of technological advancement is how simulations play a role in the industry. Simulations have been an important part of a lot of high-stress or upper level fields for a long time, think NASA and their pre-space training or air-force flight simulators. Perhaps an even easier example is simply simulating a customer service situation at a Kohl’s to test a new employee’s ability to function as a shoe salesman. Whereas companies like Arvai are making it clear that they want their to be a fine line between reality and their tools, simulators try to do teir best when they situation genuinely feels real; and this starts stepping into the genre of virtual reality mixed with augmented reality.
The nuances between these different realities and training simulations are important to hash out now, though it probably won’t make that much of a difference unless we can use this information to defeat our tyrannical energy-harvesting overlords one day.
References
Pardes, A (2017). “Sorry, PowerPoint: The Slide Deck of the Future Will Be in AR.” Retrieved December 20, 2017, from https://www.wired.com/story/prezi-augmented-reality/
Graft, K (2017). “How neuroscience can pave the way for VR’s future.” Retrieved December 20, 2017, from https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/306267/How_neuroscience_can_pave_the_way_for_VRs_future.php
Morris, J (2016). Narrative Realities and Alternate Zombies: A Student Centered Alternate Reality Game. Play/Write edited by Douglas Eyman & Andrea Davis.
