It’s been a great few days for those of us ready for a cyberpunk dystopia. Microsoft’s Windows 10 announcement came hand-in-hand with a demo of Microsoft HoloLens, their prototype of a holographic platform for computing. The project is only one of many headsets currently exploring augmented and/or reality, with new rumors on Oculus Rift (now supported in the Firefox browser), Google’s MagicLeap, Samsung’s Gear VR, and many others all vying to be the first to take VR and AR from ill-fated gadget (remember Virtual Boy?) to consumer revolution. Here’s a few readings that explore the technologies that might be transforming our classrooms in the future:
- Sean O’Kane at The Verge takes a humorous look at the images included with the patent drawings for Magic Leap, Google’s venture into augmented reality. His narratives offer extended interpretations of the sketches: “Then, the Magic Leap dystopia appears. The drawings reveal a possible future where Magic Leap will allow a bachelor to not only interact with and photograph a football game from his couch (something tells me the NFL would have a problem with this), but also ”hang“ a virtual _Quantum of Solace_ poster for on his wall for some reason, probably because he likes loneliness.”
- Jessi Hempel at Wired got to spend some hands-on time with Microsoft’s Project Hololens, and got to explore some of the demos including ones with immediate educational potential: “ Another scenario lands me on a virtual Mars-scape. Kipman developed it in close collaboration with NASA rocket scientist Jeff Norris, who spent much of the first half of 2014 flying back and forth between Seattle and his Southern California home to help develop the scenario. With a quick upward gesture, I toggle from computer screens that monitor the Curiosity rover’s progress across the planet’s surface to the virtual experience of being on the planet.”
- Kyle Vanhemert at Wired takes a look at a museum exhibit in virtual reality that could never otherwise exist: “On March 18, 1990, two thieves disguised as Boston police officers walked into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, handcuffed the guards on duty, and walked out with thirteen artworks valued at $300 million. The haul included pieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Degas. The works were never recovered, but Ziv Schneider is including them in an upcoming museum exhibition nonetheless.”
- Jill Lepore at The New Yorker takes a look at the perceived ephemerality of the virtual “reality” we already depend on, the web: “The average life of a Web page is about a hundred days. Strelkov’s “We just downed a plane” post lasted barely two hours. It might seem, and it often feels, as though stuff on the Web lasts forever, for better and frequently for worse: the embarrassing photograph, the regretted blog (more usually regrettable not in the way the slaughter of civilians is regrettable but in the way that bad hair is regrettable).”
- Ian Bogost at The Atlantic takes on the concept of an “algorithmic culture” (as advanced by Ted Striphas) and suggests that we might instead be living in a “computational theocracy”: “Here’s an exercise: The next time you hear someone talking about algorithms, replace the term with “God” and ask yourself if the meaning changes. Our supposedly algorithmic culture is not a material phenomenon so much as a devotional one, a supplication made to the computers people have allowed to replace gods in their minds, even as they simultaneously claim that science has made us impervious to religion.”
For a blast from the past of virtual reality interfaces, check out this video by Ava Benjamin featured on The Atlantic examining the transformation of a Nintendo Power Glove into a keyboard:
[CC BY 2.0 Photo by Flickr User Pascal]