Reminded me of the ARCHEOGUIDE project that was promoted before the 2004 Athens Olympics. This was an augmented reality project that allowed people physically exploring the site of ancient Olympia to have virtual constructs of the “unruined” structures superimposed upon the landscape to give impressions of their size and relationship to other structures. More in the paper Cultivate Interactive Issue 9: Augmented Reality Touring of Archaeological Sites with the ARCHEOGUIDE System.

Also there is an exploration of the ruins of the bronze age palace at Knosós on the island of Crete available at British School at Athens: Knosós. (Uses Quicktime VR)

Three different approaches - virtual reality, augmented reality and web-based media.

But I would argue that, thanks to their sheer immersiveness, virtual worlds are qualitatively different from previous escapes, and getting more sophisticated all the time. My concern is what happens to the world while we’re waiting to upload into our digital utopias. The more realistic and appealing our virtual worlds, the more I fear people will avoid dealing with real problems. It’s certainly possible that virtual worlds will have a positive societal influence, with people trying to replicate some of their virtual experiences in real life. But I think it’s far more likely that people will increasingly seek to escape a world with poverty, sickness, social strife and other ills for one where such suffering is not only eliminated, but simply not represented because those who suffer can’t afford the cost of entry.

Related link - Greenflame: By their eschatology you shall know them.

No sex please, robot, just clean the floor - Sunday Times - Times Online notes the call by some for ethical guidelines to be developed with respect to robot/AI research. Ethical guidelines for both developers and users.

BetterHumans.com : An uplifting evening with James Hughes. Simon Smith ponders whether you should make your pet (or other animals) more intelligent if you had the power to do so. Again some interesting reflections here (though Deep Blue Sea did come to mind seeing as dogs and cats are carnivores).

See: Wired News: Next Game Controller: Your Phone and Human Interface Technology New Zealand (Videos).

See also: Greenflame: UN uses video game as educational tool

Anyway, it’s a Gilbert and Sullivan knockoff available for download at I am the very model of a Singularitarian - Charlie Kam’s H+ filk. Just writing up some notes on the “Singularity” so it made me smile. The link to the web page has the lyrics too, which is good because the jargon and buzzwords come thick and fast.

“What is the singularity?” I hear you ask. See Transhumanist FAQ : 2.7 What is the singularity? and Technological singularity - Wikipedia.

The podcast wasn’t bad either with some interesting ideas about virtual reality.

I remember discussing with some friends that the way that sociable computers might come about would not be through embodied robotics but through an AI system hooked up to an avatar (maybe trained through embodied robotics though). If you spend you day interacting with a life-like avatar then over time you may come to consider it more than a program on your computer (or PDA or media player).

LifeFX was developed in part using technology researched in part here at the University of Auckland for medical simulations. There’s an article here about it: Wired 8.12: Must Read - Interface2face.

Oh, and there are some video clips of it here: LifeFX Demos.

Hoffman, Hunter G. “Virtual-Reality Therapy.” Scientific American 291, no. 2 (2004): 58-65. [HTML version]North, Max M., Sarah M. North, and Joseph R. Coble. “Virtual Reality Therapy: An Effective Treatment for Psychological Disorders.” In Handbook of Virtual Environments : Design, Implementation, and Applications, ed. Kay M. Stanney, 1065-1078. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.

Rizzo, Albert A., J. Galen Buckwalter, and Cheryl van der Zaag. “Virtual Environment Applications in Clinical Neuropsychology.” In Handbook of Virtual Environments : Design, Implementation, and Applications, ed. Kay M. Stanney, 1027-1064. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002.