technology Archives - Page 2 of 7

Participants don virtual reality headsets at an event put on by NYU’s Future Reality Lab.

Can mixed reality be a shared experience?

New VR tech unveiled at Tribeca Immersive underscores social nature of storytelling One of the downsides of virtual reality is how isolating it can be. To be sure, there are exceptions, such as multiplayer games and the ability to access remote experiences — say, a real-time tour inside an Egyptian pyramid. But for the most part, you slip on a VR headset and you’re encased inside your own virtual world. Today New York University’s Future Reality Lab is debuting a new shared XR technology at Tribeca Immersive, part of the Tribeca Film Festival, with the release of a new VR short called “CAVE.” It’s a coming-of-age story told through a new system developed to emphasize the social nature of art,

How cutting-edge fiction shapes our future

For decades, fiction authors have built worlds for their books that, over time, become reality. H.G. Wells imagined inspired inventions from the laser to email. Jules Verne envisioned modern submarines, TV newscasts and lunar modules. Isaac Asimov predicted robotics and mobile computing. “Star Trek” conjured the holodeck and universal translators. I still get chills thinking of Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Veldt.” As the tech advances, engineers and technologists begin to build what seemed like science fiction fantasy only a few years or decades before. Today, teams at Amazon AWS and elsewhere are working on a sort of universal translator. And what is a holodeck but an advanced form of virtual reality? Not all such fantasies pan out — we

AI in the movies & the meaning of life (infographic)

Motion pictures have blazed a trail in stoking ideas and igniting debate about AI — and the notion of what it means to be alive. Here’s an infographic and essay about artificial intelligence in the movies.

CEO Sam Liang, left, and co-founder/VP Engineering Yun Fu in the AISense offices. (

Otter and artificial intelligence for voice

The Otter Voice Notes consumer app — free in the Apple App Store and on Google Play — lets you record and transcribe up to 600 minutes of audio every month at no cost. But the app’s maker, AI Sense, has more ambitious hopes for voice artificial intelligence.

Envira vs. Essential Grid for image galleries

Lately I’ve been paying a bit more attention to grouping together photo galleries on this blog rather than simply pointing offsite to my Flickr albums, with more than 11,700 photos. I did a test run of two WordPress plug-ins in my photo galleries here and thought I’d share the results.

How to change fonts in a WordPress dashboard

Aquick techie post here for WordPress aficionados. Back in August 2016, WordPress made a major update with version 4.6. One change that I abhorred — given that I’m a writer who’s accustomed to crafting blog posts in a standard sans-serif font — was the reversion in the admin dashboard to an ugly serif system font. So, for my five WordPress sites, I asked my developer, David Davis, to bring an Open Sans or Verdana look back to my dashboard. (Note that none of this is visible to the public, only to the author.)

4 flavors of net neutrality (and this is the worst)

I’ve been aware of the importance of net neutrality — the principle that all Internet service providers should enable equal access to all content and applications — for several years now. The last time net neutrality was under siege, in 2012, NPR interviewed me about why the threat posed by its repeal was so grave. The 2012 day of action/online blackout, a successful campaign against the restrictive Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), was memorable because major websites like Wikipedia, Reddit, Tumblr and Google went dark or displayed prominent site interruptions for the full day. This time around? They’re not stepping up to the plate, doubtless because their bottom lines may not be directly affected, even if their users are.

Photo gallery: Silicon Valley tech luminaries

Over the past dozen years, I’ve attended dozens of technology conferences and events in Greater Silicon Valley, from San Francisco down to Santa Clara and beyond. And more often than not, I take my Canon camera along to record the folks on stage who are helping to shape where we’re heading as a culture. Flickr is the place where I’ve posted thousands of these shots. But I thought it would be fun to try out a new WordPress plug-in I downloaded today, Envira Gallery (I’ll write about it separately on this blog). So here’s my photo gallery of Silicon Valley tech luminaries I’ve photographed over the years. (You’ll notice they’re overwhelmingly white males. Yes, that’s a problem. So I’m including

A glimpse of the VR deluge ahead

Outtakes from the VR Tuesday meetup in San Francisco OK, you’ve heard about this virtual reality thing and know something big is coming down the road, but what is it, how big will it be and is it worth paying attention to? Last night I wandered out to Shasta Ventures in South Park, the longtime epicenter of the tech revolution in San Francisco, for VR Tuesday #9, the ninth monthly gathering dedicated to unpacking the world of virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and the digital 3D world. Founder Jacob Mullins, a partner at Shasta Ventures, brings in three entrepreneurs or developers every month to talk about the real-world, commercial applications of this stuff.

‘Fourth Transformation’ book review: Brace for impact

A clear-eyed look at the mind-blowing changes in spatial computing dead ahead Title: “The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence Change Everything” Authors: Robert Scoble & Shel Israel My rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ Release date: December 7, 2016 on Amazon At the Launch Scale conference in San Francisco on Nov. 14, technologist-futurist Robert Scoble held forth for 20 minutes wearing a mixed reality headset, allowing him to interact with the attendees (startup founders, angels and techies) while projecting a presentation behind him. “Within two years,” he said at one point, “everybody in this room will be wearing a glass. And you might say ‘I’m never going to do that,’ but I’m telling you right now, you will.” A few minutes later he insisted: “You all are