How virtual reality could change moviegoing

"Jump!" you're told again.

It's actually a harmless request, since this is virtual reality. Instead of a cliff's edge you're standing on a carpeted floor in a lounge at the Sundance Film Festival and you've been watching "The Climb," a brief film made by 8i, a startup that creates virtual reality, or VR, content.

"Your logical side is saying, 'I'm in a headset. I'm in this room.' But your emotional side is saying, 'I'm on a cliff. I could die here. I don't want to jump,'" said 8i co-founder and CEO Linc Gasking.

Virtual reality, the emerging technology that is poised to transform video gaming, is also coming to the movies. Here at Sundance 2016, more VR experiences than ever are being showcased as part of the film festival's New Frontier program, which celebrates new or alternative forms of creative expression.

Ramzi Haidamus, president of Nokia Technologies, says the development of VR for filmmakers has been a long time in the works. He recently spearheaded OZO, the first virtual-reality camera designed specifically for Hollywood-grade filmmakers. Haidamus has been experimenting with virtual reality for years and says the technology is making huge strides.

"I couldn't jump," Haidamus said after trying out "The Climb." He credits audiences' hunger to be closely connected to stories and VR's appealing price point as being a "perfect storm" for the technology this year.

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What Parents Really Need To Know About Technology and Children Today: Teleclass Re-cap

Computers, tablets and phones are different from TV and not that much more interactive. Television shows like Dora the explorer and Blues Clues were precursors to the interactive technology today. And they were more popular with children because they get them involved. Any Internet or gaming with computers and tablets and phones involves more connection to people and more interaction and those two things can be highly addictive.TV is also addictive but more in a passive way.

 



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Minds Everywhere: 'Panpsychism' Takes Hold in Science

by Tia Ghose, Senior Writer   

SAN FRANCISCO — Are humans living in a simulation? Is consciousness nothing more than the firing of neurons in the brain? Or is consciousness a distinct entity that permeates every speck of matter in the universe?

Several experts grappled with those topics at a salon at the Victorian home of Susan MacTavish Best, a lifestyle guru who runs Living MacTavish, here on Feb. 16. The event was organized by "Closer to Truth," a public television series and online resource that features the world's leading thinkers exploring humanity's deepest questions.

The answer to the question "what is consciousness" could have implications for the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and far-out concepts like mind uploading and virtual immortality, said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, the creator, writer and host of "Closer to Truth." [Superintelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures]

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Body Bioelectronics: 5 Technologies that Could Flex with You

No more tough breaks. As "smart" electronics get smaller and softer, scientists are developing new medical devices that could be applied to — or in some cases, implanted in — our bodies. And these soft and stretchy devices shouldn't make your skin crawl, because they're designed to blend right in, experts say.

We want to solve the mismatch between rigid wafer-based electronics and the soft, dynamic human body, said Nanshu Lu, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin.

Lu, who previously studied with John Rogers, a soft-materials and electronics expert at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, focuses her research on stretchable bioelectronics. Lu and her colleagues have invented a cheaper and faster method for manufacturing electronic skin patches called epidermal electronics, reducing what was a multiday process to 20 minutes. [Bionic Humans: Top 10 Technologies]

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'Superman Memory Crystal' Could Store Data for 13.8 Billion Years

Copies of the Magna Carta, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the King James Bible have now been digitally stored on a piece of glass known as a "Superman memory crystal" that has the capacity to save huge amounts of information for up to 13.8 billion years, researchers say.

Using a method of laser etching, researchers at the University of Southampton, in the United Kingdom, archived these documents, along with Isaac Newton's scientific treatise "Opticks," on coin-size pieces of glass. These tiny discs can survive for billions of years at temperatures of 374 degrees Fahrenheit (190 degrees Celsius). And at room temperature, they can last virtually forever, the researchers said.

"It is thrilling to think that we have created the technology to preserve documents and information and store it in space for future generations," Peter Kazansky, a professor at the university's Optoelectronics Research Centre, said in a statement. "This technology can secure the last evidence of our civilization; all we've learnt will not be forgotten." [Science Fact or Fiction? The Plausibility of 10 Sci-Fi Concepts]

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Boston Dynamics' New Atlas Robot Can't Be Pushed Around

Robotics company Boston Dynamics released a new video yesterday (Feb. 23) showcasing its upgraded Atlas robot, and the footage features a slew of impressive (and somewhat unsettling) new capabilities.

The humanoid Atlas robot, which has been overhauled with a sleeker design, can be seen at the beginning of the video walking around untethered before it opens the front door to Boston Dynamics' office and steps outside. The bot is then seen walking on uneven and snowy terrain, maneuvering around trees and correcting its balance several times.

The new-and-improved robot is "designed to operate outdoors and inside buildings," Boston Dynamics wrote in a description of the video posted on YouTube. "It is specialized for mobile manipulation. It is electrically powered and hydraulically actuated. It uses sensors in its body and legs to balance and LIDAR and stereo sensors in its head to avoid obstacles, assess the terrain, help with navigation and manipulate objects."

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