Category Archives: virtual
Tish Harrison Warren
We are creatures made to encounter beauty and goodness in the material world.
But digitization is changing our relationship with materiality — both the world of nature and of human relationships. We are trained through technology (and technology corporations) to spend more time on screens and less time noticing and interacting with this touchable, smellable, feelable world. Social media in particular trains us to notice that which is large, loud, urgent, trending and distant, and to therefore miss the small, quiet importance of our proximate and limited, embodied lives.
Nick Bostrom
A technologically mature “posthuman” civilization would have enormous computing power. Based on this empirical fact, the simulation argument shows that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) The fraction of human‐level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero; (2) The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor‐simulations is very close to zero; (3) The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.
If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced civilizations so that virtually none contains any relatively wealthy individuals who desire to run ancestor‐simulations and are free to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation. In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it seems sensible to apportion one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3).
Unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants will almost certainly never run an ancestor‐simulation.
Shelly Fagan
The idea we have free will is an illusion inside the illusion.
Oculus
David Ewalt
Elizabeth Grosz
The concept of virtuality has been with us a remarkably long time. It is a coherent and functional idea in Plato’s writing, where both ideas and simulacra exist in some state of virtuality. Instead of too closely identifying it with the invention of new technologies — as is the current obsession — we must realize that since there has bee writing (in the Derridean sense of trace — that is, as the very I precondition of culture itself), there has been some idea of the virtual. The text we read may be in real space, but to the extent that it is comprehensible to us, it also exists in a state of virtuality. We did not have to wait for the computer screen or the movie projector in order to enter virtual space; we have been living in its shadow more or less continually.
V9QLNFR178
Now choose all of the multi-thousands of unique video online games which were, are actually, and can be available around the world. Now go ahead and take multi-Many copies of each distinctive video clip activity. Which is lots of Digital fact. In truth, in a connected type of virtual fact, Digital and real realities are no more simple to inform apart.
When watching a new Motion picture or Television show loaded with special effects, I now come across it unachievable anymore to distinguish what was filmed as authentic reality photographs and what was included on as Laptop-produced Digital fact photos.
Now it is clear that there are a lot extra virtual landscapes, worlds, even universes in existence inside our fact than that truth. You can connect with Countless Digital realities; you can also develop your own private virtual truth, even realities, nevertheless you are trapped with just with the ability to communicate with just one serious actuality.
New forms of filmmaking, specifically virtual reality, involve a viewer being “there”—having the agency to explore, to tell their own stories, to exist in a space that was for so long separated from them. With this connection comes vast responsibility, where both the creator and the viewer’s mindsets must be respected, considered, and celebrated.
Danfung Dennis
No matter how enlightened any one of us may be, we are fundamentally limited to our own points of view — but it is human nature to try to broaden our perspective. For me, that’s where V.R. comes in. I have found that the medium has an extraordinary capacity to convey the kinds of feelings of presence and place I’ve always aspired to capture through photojournalism. …
In V.R., we instinctively feel a surge of empathy for those whose experiences we are immersed in. The suffering of people in war zones becomes our suffering, just as the killing of animals in the wild and in factory farms becomes a source of our pain as well.
Referencing his own limitations of perspective, Einstein once wrote of grief, “Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Through V.R., we now have a chance to do just that.
Alex Fitzpatrick
Most of the hype surrounding virtual reality has rightly centered on premium headsets, such as the forthcoming Oculus Rift and HTC Vive (both of which will likely cost several hundred dollars). But Google Cardboard is revolutionary in its own right. Since its 2014 debut, the scrappy viewer—which can be built from scratch using free online instructions and relies on your smartphone screen for visuals—has emerged as a playground for virtual reality, priming brands and consumers alike for one of the world’s most anticipated technologies. There are Cardboard apps that let people drive cars (from Mercedes-Benz), attend concerts (from musician Jack White) and even play immersive video games. “We ask people, ‘Hey, put your smartphone in this piece of cardboard. It’s going to do something amazing,’” says Clay Bavor, a Google VP who oversees VR projects. “And then it does, and they’re shocked.”
Raffaele Milani
The gaze fixed on the landscape has inspired many writers and painters to immerse themselves in a vision in which they bring together the world of reality and that of dreams. The rising or setting of the sun, the alternation of day and night, as well as of the seasons, has inspired a visionariness with respect to the hours and to places.
宇宙開発事業団
Шаповалов Егор
村田雅志
ただ興味深いのは、こうした状況にもかかわらず、ビットコインの価格は、マウントゴックス破綻後も暴落することなく、前述したように600ドル超の水準で安定していることである。これは、富の保蔵機能に対するニーズは低下したかもしれないが、送金機能や決済機能に対するニーズは依然として高いためと思われる。
金融機関に口座を保有していなくても、非常に低い手数料で送金を可能にするというビットコインの利点は、先進国だけでなく新興国で生活する人々にとっても非常に魅力的だ。グローバル化の進展で先進国と新興国との間でのマネーフローは拡大を続けているが、新興国に送金する際には多額の手数料が発生するほか、送金完了まで時間がかかるといったデメリットがある。低額かつ短時間で送金が可能なビットコインは、ビジネス界でのグローバル化の流れに非常にマッチしたものといえる。
クレジットカードに比べ低い手数料で決済を可能にする点も大きな利点である。インターネットでの買い物ではクレジットカード決済が一般的となっているが、カード番号や個人情報を提示することに躊躇する方も多い。一方、ビットコインであれば個人情報が流出する可能性は非常に低く、ネットでの決済もスムーズである。
現に米国のネット通販大手でナスダックに上場するオーバーストック・ドット・コムや、米家電販売大手サイトを運営するタイガー・ダイレクトは今年1月、ビットコインの受け入れを表明した。米メディアの報道によれば、オーバーストック・ドット・コムでは、ビットコインを使用した購入は予想を上回るペースで伸びており、ビットコインによる14年売上高の見通しを従来の500万ドルから1000―1500万ドルに引き上げた。
マウントゴックス破綻を機にビットコインは、消滅するとの見方も一部にあるようだが、既存の金融システムに比べ送金機能や決済機能の点で優位を維持している以上、実際には今後も一定の存在感を示し続けると思われる。ただ、低コストの送金機能や決済機能は、ビットコインだけでなく他の仮想通貨にも備わったものである。すでにビットコインの欠点とされるマイニング時間の長さ(約10分)などが改良された「リップル」という別の仮想通貨が、ビットコインに代わる存在として認知度を高めている。
世界はビットコインを通じインターネットに立脚した仮想通貨がもたらす利点を深く理解してしまった。たとえ何らかの理由でビットコインの存在感が低下したとしても、仮想通貨のニーズは今後も強まり続け、強い需要を背景に普及が進むと考えた方が自然と思われる。
Jed McCaleb
The New York Times
Banque de France
accenture
At its most basic level, cloud computing allows users to obtain computing capabilities through the Internet, regardless of their physical location. The cloud has the potential to disrupt the industry and individual businesses, both positively and negatively. It can address a number of intriguing challenges that media and entertainment companies face—from proliferating devices that demand a more flexible business model to new levels of IT capacity requirements that dictate highly scalable IT solutions to competitive pressures for speed and innovation that call for better workflow, business analytics and customer insight. And, cloud providers are improving their ability to offer their clients the ability to deliver high quality content quickly, while delivering content accessed less frequently in less expensive, large scale areas of their cloud data centers.
Jean Baudrillard
Aujourd’hui l’abstraction n’est plus celle de la carte, du double, du miroir ou du concept. La simulation n’est plus celle d’un territoire, d’un être référentiel, d’une substance. Elle est la génération par les modèles d’un réel sans origine ni réalité: hyperréel. Le territoire ne précède plus la carte ni ne lui survit. C’est désormais la carte qui précède le territoire – précession des simulacres – c’est elle qui engendre le territoire et s’il fallait reprendre la fable, c’est aujourd’hui le territoire dont les lambeaux pourrissent lentement sur l’étendue de la carte. C’est le réel et non la carte, dont les vestiges subsistent çà et là, dans les déserts qui ne sont plus ceux de l’empire, mais le nôtre. Le désert du réel lui-même.
maistora
Charles Melman
The virtual world provided by the Internet is successful because it is a playful world. It is a world consistent with the way of life of young people, does not require engagement or commitment. There one can live a series of successive lives without any definite commitment. People want to distance itself from reality because it is not scary or not-free, but because it always involves a limit. Furthermore, the reality requires an identity, a more or less clear goal in life while those exercises not virtual assume any identity, no vision, and even tips all limits, including those of decency and civility.
anon
Andrea Pozzo
Laurent Margantin
Toutes les banques d’affaires savent. Leurs employés directement aux opérations savent, le rapport de la sous-commission d’enquête du Sénat le prouve. Les auteurs montrent comment Citigroup, Chase, cherchent et trouvent les moyens de faire passer des dettes pour de simples transactions entre entités indépendantes qui ne le sont pas ; aucun gaz n’est vendu ni acheté, c’est fictif, mais l’argent est bien transvasé, il passe par paradis fiscaux, l’argent et les dettes sont réels. La notion d’économie virtuelle est une fiction ; l’argent et les dettes sont réels.
CreativES
Harald Stümpke
小松和彦
洋の東西を問わず、人間が生活している世界にはつねにおびただしい「境界」が設定されている。境界を作ることが自分たちの世界を作ることだからである。人びとは錯綜し重層化した境界を、必要に応じて強く意識したり無視したりしながら生活を営んできたのである。
「異界」とは、こうした境界の向こう側に展開している領域のことである。人びとはこの未知の「異界」にっいてさまざまな想像をめぐらしてきた。ある者は境界を踏み越えて異界に分け入り、そこでの体験を語り伝えた。またあるときは、境界の向こうからやって来た者から異界の様子を聞こうとした。その話は本当の話であったり、幻想の話であったりしたが、人びとはその話からさらにまた多くの異界をめぐる物語をっむぎ出していった。
私たち日本人も、古代から現代に至るまで、境界の向こう側に広がる深い「闇」を見つめ、スサノオのヤマタノオロチ退治の物語や源頼光による大江山の鬼退治の物語、浦嶋太郎の龍宮訪問の物語、等々、さまざまな物語を生み出し語り伝えてきた。日本人もまた異界を想定することで、自分たちの世界を作り上げてきたのである。
Jeremy N. Bailenson, Shanto Iyengar, Nick Yee
Virtual Human Interaction Lab – Stanford University
The mission of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL) is to understand the dynamics and implications of interactions among people in immersive virtual reality simulations, and other forms of human digital representations in media, communication systems, and games.
- What new social issues arise from the use of immersive virtual reality communication systems?
- How can virtual reality be used as a basic research tool to study the nuances of face-to-face interaction?
- How can virtual reality be applied to improve everyday life, such as legal practices, and communications systems.
Robin S. Rosenberg, Shawnee L. Baughman, Jeremy N. Bailenson
Recent studies have shown that playing prosocial video games leads to greater subsequent prosocial behavior in the real world. However, immersive virtual reality allows people to occupy avatars that are different from them in a perceptually realistic manner. We examine how occupying an avatar with the superhero ability to fly increases helping behavior.
Using a two-by-two design, participants were either given the power of flight (their arm movements were tracked to control their flight akin to Superman’s flying ability) or rode as a passenger in a helicopter, and were assigned one of two tasks, either to help find a missing diabetic child in need of insulin or to tour a virtual city. Participants in the “super-flight” conditions helped the experimenter pick up spilled pens after their virtual experience significantly more than those who were virtual passengers in a helicopter.
The results indicate that having the “superpower” of flight leads to greater helping behavior in the real world, regardless of how participants used that power. A possible mechanism for this result is that having the power of flight primed concepts and prototypes associated with superheroes (e.g., Superman). This research illustrates the potential of using experiences in virtual reality technology to increase prosocial behavior in the physical world.
Sebastian Thrun
(Realizing the potential at his fingertips, Sebastian Thrun launched Udacity, an independent online education company that provides high quality education at low cost to virtually everyone.)
- People really want good education. There is a huge need.
- Hundreds of thousands of people just sign up because they really care. They really want to advance themselves and their lives and they don’t want to pay $50,000 or $100,000 to get there.
- I think it’s the beginning of higher education. It’s the beginning of higher education for everybody.
Udacity
Udacity is the future of online higher education. We offer accessible, affordable, engaging classes that anyone can take, anytime.
Learn by doing – Highly interactive, project-based exercises
The lecture is dead – Bite-sized videos make learning fun
Awesome instructors – Industry experts and passionate educators
Real world examples – Always learn in context, plus get virtual “field trips”
Active community – Forums and meetups with curious, engaged peers to support learning
Academic and career advancement – Certificates of completion to show what you know
Kevin Robins, Frank Webster
The ‘virtual university’ is becoming a commonplace idea or trope. Our exploration will be a critical one, hence the insertion of the question mark into our title—the ‘virtual university?’. The first concerns the importance of distinguishing between futurological predictions about the ‘virtual university’, on the one hand, and the more complex situation of what is actually happening in higher education, on the other. We need, that is to say, to separate the myths and ideologies that are proliferating about the ‘university of the future’ from changing realities and practices in actual universities now, in the present. The second issue concerns the problem of the narrow and restrictive technological bias that distinguishes most accounts of the ‘virtual university’. The basic assumption is that the ‘virtual university’ is the outcome and consequence of a new technological revolution, and that we may start and end our discussion of contemporary transformations in higher education with the question of new digital or virtual technologies. A principal aim of this volume is to counter the futurological and technological biases in the debate on the meaning and significance of the ‘virtual university’. (PDF)
Max Ortiz Catalan
Our technology helps amputees to control an artificial limb, in much the same way as their own biological hand or arm, via the person’s own nerves and remaining muscles.
Many of the patients that we work with have been amputees for more than 10 years, and have almost never thought about moving their missing hand during this time. When they arrived here, they got to test our virtual-reality environment or our more advanced prostheses in order to evaluate the decoding algorithms. We placed electrodes on their amputation stumps, and after a few minutes, they were able to control the artificial limbs in ways that they didn’t know they could, most of the times. This made the patients very excited and enthusiastic.
By testing the method on a few patients, we can show that the technology works and then hopefully get more grants to continue clinical studies and develop the technology further. This technology can then become a reality for lots of people. We want to leave the lab and become part of the patients’ everyday life. If the first operations this winter are successful, we will be the first research group in the world to make ‘thought-controlled prostheses’ a reality for patients to use in their daily activities, and not only inside research labs.
凯文•邦瑟 (Kevin Bonsor)
Fox News
The prototypes Google displayed have a sleek wrap-around look and appear nothing like clunky 3-D glasses. But if Google isn’t careful, they could be dismissed as a kind of Bluetooth earpiece of the future, a fashion faux-pas where bulky looks outweigh marginal utility.
In development for a couple of years, the project is the brainchild of Google X, the online search-leader’s secret facility that spawned the self-driving car and could one day send elevators into space.
If it takes off, it could bring reality another step closer to science fiction, where the line between human and machine blurs.
habrahabr.ru
Kevin Bonsor
Video games have been entertaining us for nearly 30 years. Computer graphics have become much more sophisticated since then, and game graphics are pushing the barriers of photorealism. Now, researchers and engineers are pulling graphics out of your television screen or computer display and integrating them into real-world environments. This new technology, called augmented reality, blurs the line between what’s real and what’s computer-generated by enhancing what we see, hear, feel and smell.
On the spectrum between virtual reality, which creates immersive, computer-generated environments, and the real world, augmented reality is closer to the real world. Augmented reality adds graphics, sounds, haptic feedback and smell to the natural world as it exists.
David Holmes
Of the myriad technological and cultural transformations taking place today, one has emerged to provide perhaps the most tangible opportunity for understanding the political and ethical dilemma of contemporary society. The arrival of virtual reality and virtual communities, both as metaphors for broader cultural processes and as the material contexts which are beginning to enframe the human body and human communication, has attracted considerable interest from social theorists, philosophers, and cultural and historical thinkers.
人民网-人民日报
互联网经常被称为虚拟空间,但活跃在其中的,依然是现实世界中的人。有人的地方就应当有规则和秩序,这早已是人类社会的常识,现实世界如此,虚拟空间也是如此。
互联网的无限开放性,使得它比现实世界更容易出现无序。这些年,网络平台上不时出现的淫秽色情、网络诈骗、造谣诽谤、网络水军,不仅扰乱了网络秩序,也对人们的现实生活形成了干扰。建立和完善虚拟空间的“现实规则”,推动网络文明健康发展成为共识和心声。
早在1996年,美国就明确将互联网世界定性为“与真实世界一样需要进行监控”的领域。在德国,宣扬纳粹思想的内容在互联网上无法打开。英国警察要求网吧保留对上网者行为的知情权。这些互联网发达国家的经验给我们以启示。在网络这一公共领域中,规则建立越早、发展越成熟,我们就越能兴利除弊、越能抑制“负效应”,释放“正能量”。
VirtuelCity
VirtuelCity réalise la modélisation de villes en 3D à partir d’informations géographiques au sol ou aériennes sous le nom Vcity 3D. Nos algorithmes nous permettent de réaliser rapidement des agglomérations et villes en 3D réalistes. Les données 3D représentent la réalité avec un niveau de détail du plus simple au plus complexe (cheminées, balcons, intérieurs…) et sur des surfaces allant du quartier à la région.
Виртуальный музей Гулага
База данных Виртуального музея Гулага — это собрание материальных свидетельств эпохи советского террора, разбросанных по музейным коллекциям, а также «внемузейных» объектов — развалин лагерей и построек, тысяч сохранившихся и утраченных захоронений заключенных, знаков прошлого в пейзажах и панорамах городов, памятников и мемориальных досок.
Oliver Grau
What is virtual art? Never before has the world of images around us changed so fast as over recent years, never before have we been exposed to so many different image worlds, and never before has the way in which images are produced changed so fundamentally. … With the advent of new techniques for generating, distributing, and presenting images, the computer has transformed the image and now suggests that it is possible to ‘‘enter’’ it. Thus, it has laid the foundations for virtual reality as a core medium of the emerging ‘‘information society.’’
三秦都市报
小冯喜欢玩游戏,一直以来,也玩的不错,可最近,他发现自己竟成了“游戏菜鸟”,一进入游戏很快就被高手杀死,他怎么都想不通是怎么一回事,后来才知道,竟是老爸“捣的鬼”。
小冯刚登上游戏界面,只见几个比自己高好多级的“高手”就围了上来,什么也没有表示,直接将他杀死,玩游戏好几年了,这事还是最近才遇上,跟游戏里的人询问了好半天,他才发现这些人竟是老爸雇来的,专门来对付自己。
小冯的父亲说:“我想着这样一来,他或许就会对游戏失去兴趣,从而把注意力转移到找工作上。”
听父亲这么说,小冯关了电脑,一直以来,简历倒是投了不少,面试的公司也去了好几家,之前也在一家软件开发公司上过三个月的班,但工作并不顺心,“那不是我想做的,对我也没有多大的发展空间。”小冯认真地说。
至于窝在家里玩游戏,小冯表示,不是非玩不可,实在是没找上合适的工作,没事玩玩罢了。
23岁的小冯从初中就开始接触网页小游戏,上了高中后,他开始和班里的同学一起玩网络游戏,对于游戏,小冯很有天赋,很快就成了朋友圈里的“游戏达人”。
但由于学习成绩一直不错,游戏也是闲了玩,家人并没在意,最近,工作不如意,钻在家里玩游戏,不想老爸“想多了”,以为他沉溺游戏,竟雇人“对付”自己,让自己一下成了“游戏菜鸟”。
“其实,遇上这事,只是觉得奇怪,也没想到玩了几天游戏,竟让老爸误会了。工作,我是不想将就,想多给自己一点时间,找一个适合自己的。游戏真的是可玩可不玩。”听小冯这么说,冯先生才放下心来。
Walt Disney
- Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.
- You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
- I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.
- Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.
Webopedia
Not real. The term virtual is popular among computer scientists and is used in a wide variety of situations. In general, it distinguishes something that is merely conceptual from something that has physical reality. For example, virtual memory refers to an imaginary set of locations, or addresses, where you can store data. It is imaginary in the sense that the memory area is not the same as the real physical memory composed of transistors. The difference is a bit like the difference between an architect’s plans for a house and the actual house. A computer scientist might call the plans a virtual house. Another analogy is the difference between the brain and the mind. The mind is a virtual brain. It exists conceptually, but the actual physical matter is the brain.
The opposite of virtual is real, absolute, or physical.
13th Lab
Minecraft Reality is an iOS app where users can take their Minecraft creations and place them in the real world. What’s even cooler (we think) is that these creations can be saved to the locations where they were placed, meaning others can find and view them right there as well!
Gilles Deleuze
中华网
Mechdyne
Essentially, if you have a problem or challenge that could be solved with visualization, graphics, remote collaboration and sharing or other sophisticated visual information technologies, we will solve it. Partnering with Mechdyne will open new worlds for your organization, fostering innovative ideas, deepening understanding and strengthening decisions.
Warsash Maritime Academy
Full Mission Bridge Simulator
WMA’s FMS training uses a newly commissioned Kongsberg Maritime Polaris bridge simulator with 270 degree horizontal view, which can be panned through 360 degrees and with offset views.
Control equipment replicating various vessel configurations are available including single/twin screw, single/twin rudders, bow/stern thrusters and azipods.
An extensive portfolio of ownships and database areas exists. Others can be built to order.
Independent desktop consoles can drive two additional ownships/tugs.
British Airways Flight Training
Welcome to the pilot’s seat…
Absolutely no experience is required. Prepare yourself for the thrill of a lifetime as you take control of a multi-million pound, full motion flight simulator.
This is your opportunity to fly a Boeing flight simulator, normally reserved for the exclusive training of professional pilots.
First you will be given a 30 minute pre-flight briefing including flight deck instruments, controls and systems. Once your training is complete you will be at the controls from take-off to touchdown, including start-up and shut-down. All of this under the instruction of a British Airways pilot.
You may either enjoy this experience exclusively or have one additional guest accompany you. They can either watch or share the flying time with you.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
As usual with infant technologies, realizing the early dreams for virtual reality (VR) and harnessing it to real work has taken longer than the initial wild hype predicted.
Now, finally, it’s happening.
Although VR has crossed the high pass from “almost works” to “barely works,” many challenges remain both in the enabling technologies and in the systems engineering and human factors disciplines:
- Getting latency down to acceptable levels.
- Rendering massive models (> 1 M polygons) in real time.
- Choosing which display best fits each application: HMD, cave, bench, or panorama.
- Producing satisfactory haptic augmentation for VR illusions.
- Interacting most effectively with virtual worlds:
- Manipulation
- Specifying travel
- Wayfinding
- Making model worlds efficiently:
- Modeling the existing world—image-based techniques look promising
- Modeling nonexisting worlds—through CAD byproducts or hard work
- Measuring the illusion of presence and its operational effectiveness
Ivan Sutherland
Sutherland’s 1965 Vision
- Display as a window into a virtual world
- Improve image generation until the picture looks real
- Computer maintains world model in real time
- User directly manipulates virtual objects
- Manipulated objects move realistically
- Immersion in virtual world via head-mounted display
- Virtual world also sounds real, feels real
Nathan Jurgenson
This speaks to a fundamental way of conceptualizing and theorizing the Internet specifically, and spaces and places generally: that digital and material realities dialectically co-construct each other. For example, social networking sites (e.g., MySpace, Facebook) are not separate from the physical world, but rather they have everything to do with it, and the physical world has much to do with digital socializing. No longer can we think of a “real” world opposed to being “online”. Instead, we need to think with a paradigm that centers on the implosion of the worlds of bits and atoms into the augmented reality that has seemingly become ascendant.
Jean Baudrillard
En fait, cela renvoyait pour moi au problème très général de la réalité, attendu que la réalité n’est rien d’autre qu’un principe. Le « Principe de réalité », la réalité objective et le processus de reconnaissance qu’elle appelle, disparaissent en quelque sorte. À ce moment précis, la réalité délivrée de son principe devient, dans un développement exponentiel, intégrale. On a alors à faire à une réalité où tout est opérationnalité, ou plus rien ne reste hors champ. Si tout se réalise ou s’accomplit, c’est d’abord sur la base de la disparition de l’ « essence », de la « transcendance » ou du « principe » de la réalité. Cette base spectrale nous mène, d’une certaine façon, au virtuel, et à tous ces mondes où règne la virtualité.
AlloSphere
KIMOTO
シアターハウス
Aono.Y
井上靖
河北省南西部の元氏という小さい部落でわれわれは崩れかかった城壁の上にせっせと土嚢を積んだ。やがて何時間か後には行われるであろう敵襲に備えて、おのおの自分の前の砦を補強するために忙しい日没の一刻を過していたのだ。その時の不思議に静かな薄暮の訪れを、初冬の平和な村々の茂りを、遠く地平のあたりを南下して行った烏の大群を、そして遥か西方の山裾にしきりに打揚げられる烽火の煙を、あるいは又その時われわれ三人が交したひどく屈託のない会話を、それら一切をいま思い出すことのできるのは私ひとりである。右の友も左の友も、その翌日からはこの世にいないのだ。あの夜にはいったい何が行われたと言うのか。激戦――そんな濁った騒がしいものは微塵も起りはしなかった。運命の序列、そうだ、われわれが持っていてしかも知らない己が運命の序列を、仮借なくつきつけて見せるひどく冷たいものが、あの夜の闇の中を静かに、だが縦横に走っていたのだ。そして硫酸のような雨が音もなく、併しこやみなくわれわれの精神の上に降り注いでいたのだ。
Matt Mills
Blaise Aguera y Arcas
Marco Tempest
Parrot
Erick Schonfeld
People are a lot more interested these days in “augmented reality,” or at least they are on Google where it surpassed “virtual reality” as a search term. Maybe people are searching for it more just because they are not sure what it means, but it definitely is entering the collective consciousness. If virtual reality is a complete immersion in a digital world, augmented reality is more a digital overlay onto the real world. It enhances the real world with digital data, and therefore it is much more interesting than a completely fabricated environment. There is an element of magic to augmented reality apps because they juxtapose data and graphics where they have no business showing up.
Nathan Jurgenson
… This speaks to a fundamental way of conceptualizing and theorizing the Internet specifically, and spaces and places generally: that digital and material realities dialectically co-construct each other. For example, social networking sites (e.g., MySpace, Facebook) are not separate from the physical world, but rather they have everything to do with it, and the physical world has much to do with digital socializing. No longer can we think of a “real” world opposed to being “online”. Instead, we need to think with a paradigm that centers on the implosion of the worlds of bits and atoms into the augmented reality that has seemingly become ascendant.
19841117
朱旭冬
今天1号店在北京正式发布“无限1号店”项目,目的是在线下建造出千家虚拟1号店——“无限1号店”。
“无限1号店”是带有增强现实功能的体验类应用,根据“无限1号店”的信息介绍,用户打开应用后会进行定位,应用会给出附近“无限1号店”的位置,并指引用户前往。但这并非是实体店,而是一个虚拟店铺。
其最大特点是把线上电子商务搬到了线下,并充分结合传统零售与电子商务的优势,让用户能利用电子商务方便、快捷购物的同时,享受“逛超市”的体验。1号店只需在后台设定开店地址的经纬度,就能新开一家虚拟店铺。
据了解,每家“无限1号店”占地1200平米,货架上一次性呈现1000个商品,每天定时自动更新。由于面积较大,因此无限1号店的选址也需要有较大空地,1号店无线事业部总监于丽丽表示,一般无限1号店选址都在写字楼的空地、公园以及大学校园。
但是目前线下的“无限1号店”具体开在哪些地方仍不明确。1号店计划首先在北上广深四个城市开设1000家虚拟店面。
由于沃尔玛已经成为1号店的控股方,因此业内对1号店涉足线下门店多有传闻。而这次1号店走向线下采用的确实虚拟店面的模式,目前并无法判断是否借用了沃尔玛的资源。
值得注意的是,这并非1号店首次涉足线下,此前1号店曾在地铁和公交站投放广告,用户直接用智能手机在广告上扫描商品即可进入1号店购买。在投放一周后,1号店手机客户端的销售额有了3倍的增长。不过此类广告的投放已于今年4月暂停,目前的无限1号店即为其升级版本。
Joshua Lifton, Joseph A. Paradiso
The convergence of sensor networks and virtual worlds is not only a possible solution to their respective limitations, but also the beginning of a new creative medium. In such a “dual reality,” both real and virtual worlds are complete unto themselves, but also enhanced by the ability to mutually reflect, influence, and merge by means of sensor/actuator networks deeply embedded in everyday environments. This paper describes a full implementation of a dual reality system using a popular online virtual world and a human-centric sensor network designed around a common electrical power strip. Example applications (e.g., browsing sensor networks in online virtual worlds), interaction techniques, and design strategies for the dual reality domain are demonstrated and discussed.
Jim Blascovich, Jeremy Baile
People interact with virtual representations in just about every facet of life — business transactions, learning, dating, entertainment, even sexual relationships. Online dating, which used to be somewhat stigmatizing, is now normative. Young adults consider their Facebook friends just as important as the people who live close enough to meet physically. In the world of online games and virtual worlds, millions of players spend over twenty hours each week “wearing” avatars, digital representations of themselves. Strikingly, the average age of these players is not fifteen but twenty-six. Household “console” video arenas, especially games, in which people control and occupy avatars, consume more hours per day for kids than movies and print media combined. To borrow a term from the new vernacular, virtual experiences are spreading virally.
Technological developments powering virtual worlds are accelerating, ensuring that virtual experiences will become more immer- sive by providing sensory information that makes people feel they are “inside” virtual worlds.
David Friedman
Humans divide along many lines—gender, politics, race, religion, football teams. Another division is, I think, becoming increasingly important, one defined by what things matter: Real vs Virtual.
From one side, what are important are real world accomplishments—planting a tree, bringing up children, doing a useful job, writing a book. Games, online or elsewhere, can be a pleasant form of entertainment, but accomplishments in them don’t count towards whether you feel that you are, in a metaphorical sense, paying for the space you occupy, the air you breath, whether you will be entitled to die with a sense of accomplishment, a life well lived.
Seen from the other side, real world activities—earning enough to pay for food, housing, an internet connection and a WoW subscription—are merely necessary inconveniences, absorbing time that might be better spent getting your characters to level 80, killing the Litch King, growing your guild.