Weekly Assignment 2 by Jonghyun Jee

1. Alvin Wang Graylin, “16 Lessons for a VR-First Future From ‘Ready Player One’” (2017)

I most agree with: No. 3 “Network speeds and cloud computing capacity will be the key utility of the future.”

Even Skype video calls are not very stable as of now; we are still struggling with random interruptions and low quality of video resolution. To expect some desirable quality of VR/AR experiences, network speeds and computing capacity are a necessity.

I least agree with: No. 8 “Gathering experiences and access will be more important than gathering wealth”

Hope it becomes true. But I guess relatively a small portion of privileged people would enjoy the full potentials of VR/AR technology. In the worst case scenario, the gap between the haves and the have-nots might widen. We have to keep in mind that only 35.13% of the world population has smartphones.

2. Three VR titles from the NYU Shanghai VR Titles Catalog

A. Lucid Space Dreams

I was wondering how they would visualize our dreamscape. After I tried it on Oculus Quest, the first thing I noticed was that this VR video doesn’t have any user interaction. Since its title is not just a generic dream but a lucid dream, it’d be much more interesting if it gives users more interactive options. Overall, the project was audiovisually fascinating.

B. In the Eyes of the Animals

This project, a sensory visualization of how other species view the world, is highly consistent with the original purposes of VR experience. We cannot see the way how bats or mosquitoes see; we can’t even imagine it. Virtual Reality, however, allows us to explore what’s beyond, behind, and beneath our realm of human cognition.

C. The Big Picture: News in Virtual Reality  

A flat TV or a computer screen was the only way I could catch up the news. I’m wondering what it may look like in 360 degree video—I think it has quite a lot of potentials to reshape the current news platform. As all the press media aren’t looking at matters from the same perspectives, it’d be interesting to see *visually* which press is more or less biased (If an algorithm is fair enough to properly quantify the bias or credibility of each press.)

3. Kevin Kelly, “AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform—Call It Mirrorworld” (2019)

“A commercial-free mirrorworld would be infeasible and undesirable. However, if the only business model is selling our attention, then we’ll have a nightmare—because, in this world, our attention can be tracked and directed with much greater resolution, which subjects it to easy exploitation.”

As advertisement drives a substantial amount of revenue for Google and Facebook, the newly emerging AI platform might also seek to generate ad revenues. It’ll be not only annoying but somewhat creepy to see some user-targeted ads popping out everywhere.