Check Your Privilege In This Thought-Provoking VR Experience — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick
This AR Drum App Could Revolutionize Music Learning — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick

Check Your Privilege In This Thought-Provoking VR Experience — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick
This AR Drum App Could Revolutionize Music Learning — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick

This VR Bus Takes You On A Tour Of Ancient Rome — from vrscout.com by Bobbie Carlton
The Metaverse in 2040 — from pewresearch.org by Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie
Hype? Hope? Hell? Maybe all three. Experts are split about the likely evolution of a truly immersive ‘metaverse.’ They expect that augmented- and mixed-reality enhancements will become more useful in people’s daily lives. Many worry that current online problems may be magnified if Web3 development is led by those who built today’s dominant web platforms


The metaverse will, at its core, be a collection of new and extended technologies. It is easy to imagine that both the best and the worst aspects of our online lives will be extended by being able to tap into a more-complete immersive experience, by being inside a digital space instead of looking at one from the outside.
Laurence Lannom, vice president at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives
“Virtual, augmented and mixed reality are the gateway to phenomenal applications in medicine, education, manufacturing, retail, workforce training and more, and it is the gateway to deeply social and immersive interactions – the metaverse.
Elizabeth Hyman, CEO for the XR Association
Virtual reality gives humans a turtle’s-eye view of wildlife — from phys.org by Laurel Hamers, University of Oregon
Excerpt:
A virtual reality simulation designed by a University of Oregon (UO) professor could help spur people to environmental action.
Participants in Project Shell don a virtual reality headset and take on the body of a loggerhead sea turtle, sporting flippers instead of arms. During a 15-minute immersive experience, they journey from a hatchling to an adult turtle, dodging hazards like ships and wayward fishing gear.
Participating in the simulation increased people’s empathy and concern for environmental issues, new research shows.
“Embodiment of non-human bodies is a powerful tool that environmental storytellers can use,” said Daniel Pimentel, a professor in the UO’s School of Journalism and Communication who led the work. “I hope that this experience can help raise awareness and hopefully engage the public in a way that trickles down to more support.”
From DSC:
While we’re talking turtles, see these miniature creations!
Meet the metaverse: Creating real value in a virtual world — from mckinsey.com with Eric Hazan and Lareina Yee
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Welcome to the metaverse. Now, where exactly are we? Imagine for a moment the next iteration of the internet, seamlessly combining our physical and digital lives. It’s many things: a gaming platform, a virtual retail spot, a training tool, an advertising channel, a digital classroom, a gateway to entirely new virtual experiences. While the metaverse continues to be defined, its potential to unleash the next wave of digital disruption is clear. In the first five months of 2022, more than $120 billion have been invested in building out metaverse technology and infrastructure. That’s more than double the $57 billion invested in all of 2021.
How would you define the metaverse?
Lareina: What’s exciting is that the metaverse, like the internet, is the next platform on which we can work, live, connect, and collaborate. It’s going to be an immersive virtual environment that connects different worlds and communities. There are going to be creators and alternative currencies that you can buy and sell things with. It will have a lot of the components of Web3 and gaming and AR, but it will be much larger.
Also relevant/see:
Also relevant/see:
Omar Wael built his first robot at the age of nine. ?
Now he's 13 and building a metaverse using his mother's old clothes. ?
See more ? pic.twitter.com/WxYMnaOQvt
— Euronews Next (@euronewsnext) June 28, 2022
The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders: A Tokyo Restaurant Where All the Servers Are People Living with Dementia — from openculture.com
Whole towns have already begun to structure their services around a growing number of citizens with dementia. But dementia itself remains “widely misunderstood,” says Restaurant of Mistaken Orders producer Shiro Oguni in the “concept movie” at the top of the post. “People believe you can’t do anything for yourself, and the condition will often mean isolation from society. We want to change society to become more easy-going so, dementia or no dementia, we can live together in harmony.”
Also see:
How Technology Can Improve Elder Care — from digitalsalutem.com by João Bocas
In this article, I talk about:
The world is changing. The way we live, the way we work, and the way we age are all being transformed by technology. In fact, some experts say that by 2030, more than half of the world’s population will be over 50 years old.
This is a new phenomenon for humanity. With this shift comes a need for new approaches to healthcare that are better suited to an aging population with increasingly complex needs.
Apple Starts Connecting the Dots for Its Next Big Thing — from nytimes.com by Tripp Mickle and Brian X. Chen
The company has enlisted Hollywood directors like Jon Favreau to help its effort to create products that blend the physical and virtual worlds.
Excerpt:
Nearly 15 years after the iPhone set off the smartphone revolution, Apple is assembling the pieces for what it hopes will become its next business-altering device: a headset that blends the digital world with the real one.
The company has enlisted Hollywood directors such as Jon Favreau to develop video content for a headset that it is expected to ship next year, according to three people familiar with that work. Mr. Favreau, an executive producer of “Prehistoric Planet” on Apple TV+, is working to bring that show’s dinosaurs to life on the headset, which looks like a pair of ski goggles and aims to offer virtual- and augmented-reality experiences, these people said.
Speaking of the future, here’s another item regarding what’s coming down the pike:
What Is the Metaverse? A Beginner’s Guide to Tech’s Latest Obsession — from singularityhub.com by Aaron Frank; with thanks to Jack Aldrich for this resource
The metaverse is the internet, but it’s also a spatial (and often 3D), game-engine-driven collection of virtual environments.
Excerpts:
A couple months ago, friends and business contacts started asking me for a crash course on my professional research studying virtual environments. Their interest reflects an explosion—which you’ve probably noticed—of noise and hype surrounding something called the “metaverse.”
This article is an introduction for a complete or almost beginner. There’s plenty of mainstream coverage on the topic, but it often conflates concepts: virtual reality is not the metaverse (though it’s related), and crypto/Web3 by itself is not the metaverse (though also related). Confusing, I know. Whether you’re a businessperson or bystander, this is my best effort to lay everything out.
…
So if the metaverse is just the internet—what about the internet is about to change? To answer that question, I’ve broken this article into four parts:
Also see:
Into the metaverse: What does it hold for the future of L&D? — from chieflearningofficer.com by Calvin Coffee
Excerpt:
Instead of putting learners in front of 2D videos where they’re answering questions or just clicking boxes, the metaverse allows learners to experience what a job is actually like before accepting and will enable leaders to see if employees are ready for the next level of work. In the same way flight simulators can prepare pilots for many aspects of operating and flying an aircraft, through technologies like VR the metaverse can prepare employees for almost anything at work.
“This technology can impact every stage of the HR journey for an employee,” Belch says. “We all know the interviewing process is flawed and riddled with bias. Let’s have someone do the job and show us whether or not they can do the job.” And if they mess up in VR, they’re not going to take down the whole factory. From hiring and beyond, there is an abundance of potential spaces that the metaverse can capitalize on and improve.
Research in medical training has found that information retention rates can reach 80 percent after a full year of training through immersive simulated experiences compared to just 20 percent for traditional training. “People are picking it up and are much more comfortable performing their tasks after going through the simulation,” Jordan says. “It’s incredibly powerful.”
Also from chieflearningofficer.com: