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Alongside this launch, Oculus announced a new multiplayer game that makes use of some of these new social features.

“Ultimately, new technology can reveal desires that already exist on a deep level in society,” says Rafman of the works, which pull from and amplify the seductive forces of video games and cinema. “This desire to escape completely into another dimension has existed for a long time.”

Virtual reality’s recent resurgence in prominence begins with Oculus and its visionary 23-year-old founder, Palmer Luckey. In 2012, the then-18-year-old with an affinity for retooling defunct ’90s VR headsets took a hacked-together model to Kickstarter with a funding goal of $250,000. A month later, over 10,000 individuals contributed $2.4 million to the campaign for what was at the time mainly aimed at being a gaming peripheral. Two years later, Facebook wrote a check to buy Oculus VR for $2 billion

“This is not a drill. It’s real. It’s a moment,” says Michael Naimark, Google’s first resident virtual reality artist (like Char Davies, he’s listed as a pioneer of VR on Wikipedia). “And the arts community can play a huge role in propagation.

Throughout art history, art has reflected the prevalent social relations of the time. It makes sense, then, that the most relative and innovative art forms being produced today would mirror our reality—one defined by a perceived sense of agency in a world filled with invisible algorithms and clicks baited to us by past clicks. The internet spoils us with infinite choice: opportunities to invent our personas, refashion our self-brands, optimize our lives, and enhance our experience. But with mega-corporations quietly holding the joystick, can we really self-determine our destiny?

Schilowitz hopes to engage brands to make 270-degree short films to show before the actual movie. Think Red Bull's Red Bull's many extreme sports videos. Now picture them in an immersive experience.  The money coming from brands could help offset the costs of the Escape screen.

Schilowitz believes you could take that experience into the theater. Have two people playing a virtual reality game while strapped into Oculus Rift-type devices and people would pay to watch the game on the big screen if top- ranked players were competing.

Escape will also be used to show things like concerts which can be better experienced with a wider screen. A Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett show will debut in Escape theaters in 2015.

expects that library of content to grow “very rapidly,” especially as the company works with YouTube creators to get more VR content up on the platform

According to Variety, these YouTube stars are even more influential among US teens than Hollywood celebrities.

The one stumbling block is that not that many people have the equipment to experience VR. Google says some 1 million folks already own the Cardboard viewer

it’s convenient that the company is launching these virtual reality features right before The New York Times ships 1.3 million Google Cardboard sets this weekend, as it debuts its new VR documentary, “The Displaced.”

describes the rules and restrictions we put on screen time. Some of these restrictions limit time, other restrictions filter content.

Restrictive Mediation

Unlimited access to media becomes one of the markers of adulthood.

Instructive Mediation describes what happens when we talk to our kids while watching a movie or playing a video game with them. Make it a teaching opportunity

Instructive mediation is key for raising kids that are critical thinkers and intelligent adults in a media saturated world–kids who know how to THINK about the media they consume.

Social Coviewing is when you watch something with your kids but don’t necessarily talk about it. This is what happens in a movie theater.

This is what happens when I watch Phineas and Ferb with my kids.

Parallel play is kind of like multitasking. I can be typing on my Chromebook next to my son while he’s playing minecraft. We engage in peripheral conversations, some tangential, and some directly related to the game he is playing.

Asymmetrical joint media engagement

While interacting with me online, I hope they learn good web etiquette. I’m teaching them lessons about propriety and social media. They see the kinds of things I write in emails and chats.

And if they don’t want to work with you because you’re ‘too old,’ perhaps you don’t want to work with them either,” she said.

The results of the other experiments came to the controversial conclusion that those with wealthier backgrounds were more likely to cut off other drivers, lie in negotiating, or cheat.

“The huge advantage of millimetre wave is access to new spectrum because the existing cellphone spectrum is overcrowded. It’s packed and there’s nowhere else to go,” says Jacques Rudell

However, millimetre wave transmissions have a much shorter range than mobile phone signals. A broadcast at 28GHz, the frequency Google is testing at Spaceport America, would fade out in around a tenth the distance of a 4G phone signal. To get millimetre wave working from a high-flying drone, Google needs to experiment with focused transmissions from a so-called phased array. “This is very difficult, very complex and burns a lot of power,” Rudell says

The SkyBender system is being tested with an “optionally piloted” aircraft called Centaur as well as solar-powered drones made by Google Titan, a division formed when Google acquired New Mexico startup Titan Aerospace in 2014. Titan built high-altitude solar-powered drones with wingspans of up to 50 metres

Project SkyBender is part of the little-known Google Access team, which also includes Project Loon, a plan to deliver wireless internet using unpowered balloons floating through the stratosphere.

In 2014, Darpa, the research arm of the US military, announced a program called Mobile Hotspots to make a fleet of drones that could provide one gigabit per second communications for troops operating in remote areas.

Most recently Facebook has shown off a new addition for blind users

where we are right now in AI development. We're in the literal infancy

Facebook reports that it the neural net can now judge with up to 90 percent accuracy if the blocks will fall, and they claim that's better than most humans.

even in the absence of information about the character’s past.

The age of 8 has been identified as a watershed at which children become measurably more likely to act out aggressions after watching violent behavior on television

. The children recognize that in the real world it’s impossible to fly without a plane or to be born with skin that deflects bullets. 

By age 10 or 11, children will make fairly complex judgments about characters’ motivations and they regularly distinguish between justified and unjustified violence

One study also found that if you ask children between the ages of eight and ten who they most want to be like, they are far more likely to cite superhero type characters than everyday folks like their parents.

but conflict play continues to provide a unique transitional space for children to explore and express their own tensions

We also aim to develop conflict play scenarios where children can experience the benefits of cooperation. With the fate of the world (or even the entire universe) hanging in the balance, children must learn how to build teams, trust in others and work together towards common goals. In those pretend situations, developing social skills may be the only way to overcome the lords of evil!

t’s much more entertaining to watch a sport like this where you don’t have to know what the rules are

We’re starting some VR projects around Ark

Imagine the needs and benefits of visiting a local physical retail store being replaced by AR. Even more accurately, it aims to improve and bring a brand-new shopping experience to consumers by using a digital model of a product to simulate its existence in everyday reality

The Alibaba Group, one of the world's biggest online commerce companies, will be participating in RAE's brand new feature: the Internet Retailing Theatre

Simplifying (the push of a button gets you a ride or lunch delivery) Speed (time reduction from order to delivery) Trust (reliable customers, reliable delivery)