The Avatar Machine video made us wonder whether the introduction of the third person aesthetics in augmented reality would make us less socially responsible or whether it would help us overcome inhibitions.
Pixels and Policy asks these question in a slightly different way: “is the mobile metaverse disconnecting us from reality?” The post is very much about the impact of the immersive internet, but if you read the quotes carefully, it’ll become obvious that “immersive” is not necessarily the same as “3D virtual environment”.
Texting, reading e-mail or being absorbed by the many applications on your iPhone makes you leave somehow the immediate physical space surrounding you. This in itself is not that new: reading a book (even on paper!) can make you tune out just as well. The difference is that the wearable nature of the mobile devices makes it possible to be “elsewhere” all the time.
Of course, being “elsewhere” is not the same as being in an unreal environment. The persons you chat or play with are as real as the persons standing next to you, but one has the choice to spend more time with people who are not in your physical proximity.
Watching the ThinkBalm video makes me wonder whether immersive workspaces need to be 3D virtual environments. The ThinkBalm community is very focused on such environment, and rightly so. But there are other immersive media, which could be used to make teams members more engaged and interactive. I’m not yet able to be very concrete about this, but just think about combinations of Wave technology, augmented reality and mobile devices – and all that connected to some space where the virtual and the real meet.
Roland Legrand