It’s Time to Tax Companies for Using Our Personal Data
When you use the internet, your information travels through the providers’ pipes (roads) and into and out of the platform makers’ servers (parking lots). For the most part, the platform makers rely on your data to improve their products. Google uses its immense trove of real human searches to make better artificial intelligence like transcriptions, translations and self-driving cars.
It’s this data brokerage industry that should be the primary, initial focus of the data tax. This industry exists solely to collect our information and sell it as a commodity to retailers, advertisers, marketers, even other data brokerages and government agencies.
It’s this marketplace that traffics in the actual monetary value of our data, and from it we can begin to map just how much that data might be worth overall.
Microlevies like this one have been issued successfully before. Over the last decade, the governments of 10 countries, including Chile, France and Niger, have successfully raised more than 1 billion euros in funding from a tax on airline tickets of €1 to €40 depending on the class of ticket.
Our data is ours, but it also is not ours. We trade it away for so much of our experience on the internet. Money from a data tax could begin to counter this trade imbalance.
See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/business/dealbook/taxing-companies-for-using-our-personal-data.html?_r=0
Consumer Groups Say Next Gen TV Standard Ignores Privacy
The FCC is scheduled to vote today on the long-awaited ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard. On the eve of the vote, privacy advocates have expressed concern that the standard allows broadcasters to harvest data about individual viewing habits so that advertisers can target their pitches, and there are no rules governing how broadcasters handle the data. In its 109-page proposal for the new rule, the FCC does not mention the issue of privacy. Broadcasters perceive the rule as a way to catch up to Facebook, YouTube, Amazon Prime and others. CTA president Gary Shapiro defends the standard and suggests the vote is being politicized due to the Sinclair-Tribune merger proposal.
FCC chairman Ajit Pai has said the government commission will first look at the technical standard, and “may look at privacy concerns later.”
See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/consumer-groups-say-next-gen-tv-standard-ignores-privacy/
Black Friday: HTC Offering A Year Of Access To 60 Viveport Apps For $30
HTC is offering significant discounts on pre-paid Viveport subscriptions for Black Friday.
The largest discount for a 12-month pre-paid subscription offers access to 60 apps for $30. The plan is typically priced around $80. There’s also a $40 6-month plan with 30 apps and a $20 3-month plan with 15 apps. Those are both $20 off the normal subscriptions.
The deals are available from Nov. 22 through Nov. 27.
See the full story here: https://uploadvr.com/htc-viveport-black-friday/
Consciousness Hacking & VR: Immersive Tech’s Capacity to Drive Addictions or Transcend Compulsions
There is a growing backlash against technology being catalyzed by some of the architects of the persuasive habit-forming techniques. The Guardian does a survey of user experience designers and engineers who are taking drastic actions to curtail their personal technology addiction behaviors, and asking some deeper questions about the ethical responsibility of major companies in Silicon Valley to be socially-responsible guardians of the attention economy. Tristan Harris is one of these former persuasive designers who has formed a non-profit called Time Well Spent focused on gathering quantified data for how happy people are using different mobile apps, and Harris shared some data on Sam Harris’ podcast that people are happy with 1/3 of the time they’ve spent on the most popular apps, but that they’re unhappy with or regret how they’re spending 2/3 of their time.
See the full story and listen to the podcast here: http://www.virtualrealitypulse.com/edition/daily-amazon-htc-2017-11-16?open-article-id=7536429&article-title=consciousness-hacking---vr--immersive-tech-s-capacity-to-drive-addictions-or-transcend-compulsions&blog-domain=roadtovr.com&blog-title=road-to-vr
Tim Berners-Lee on the future of the web: ‘The system is failing’
“The system is failing. The way ad revenue works with clickbait is not fulfilling the goal of helping humanity promote truth and democracy. So I am concerned,” said Berners-Lee, who in March called for the regulation of online political advertising to prevent it from being used in “unethical ways”.
Since then, it has been revealed that Russian operatives bought micro-targeted political ads aimed at US voters on Facebook, Google and Twitter. Data analytics firms such as Cambridge Analytica, which builds personality profiles of millions of individuals so they can be manipulated through “behavioural micro-targeting”, have also been criticised for creating “weaponised AI propaganda”.
“We have these dark ads that target and manipulate me and then vanish because I can’t bookmark them. This is not democracy – this is putting who gets selected into the hands of the most manipulative companies out there,” said Berners-Lee.
See the full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/15/tim-berners-lee-world-wide-web-net-neutrality
“Coco VR” Is The Best Way To Experience Pixar’s Artistry
Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR owners can explore the beautiful, stylized world of Pixar’s latest film with up to three friends.
The result of a partnership between Pixar, Oculus, Disney, and the VR production studio Magnopus, Coco VR is a social experience for up to four people. In it, each person takes on the role of a well-dressed skeleton and embarks on a journey through a series of experiences–an art studio packed with concept art from the many years of the film’s production; a cinema showing test footage that wasn’t used in the final move; a photography booth where you can shoot silly selfies of your stylized skeleton; and others. The most fantastical, and most beautiful is a ride on a gondola high above a stunning floating cityscape of rich colors and endless lights.
Simply put, there has never been a better way to immerse yourself in the art of a Pixar film.
TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE ASSETS
One reason you see a lot of virtual reality projects tied to Hollywood films is that the VR producers have access to all the 3D models and art assets created by their motion picture counterparts.
For those at Pixar, setting VR users free inside this space meant surrendering the kind of control they’ve had over many years of making hit computer-animated movies.
EATING THEIR OWN DOG FOOD
At the same time, the project’s creators were able to take advantage of the social aspects of the experience they were crafting. It’s built to allow multiple users to explore the project together, and during production, that’s exactly what the producers did.
When in the creation stages of a film, Pixar’s producers will go into a screening room where they watch shots together and collectively comment on what they’re seeing. With Coco VR, they utilized the project’s social features to wander around on joint scouting trips where they could look for things that were broken or not working the way they were intended.
“Literally, that’s how we made it,” Sondheimer says. “Without the social aspect, it would have been hard to understand what the other person was seeing.”
Sometimes it’s hard to understand why movie studios make VR projects tied to the films other than because someone in marketing told them that’s the thing to do these days. But with Coco VR, you quickly understand that the point is to feel like you’re getting a taste of the universe around which Coco was made, and that the producers were entirely focused on making that taste as enjoyable as possible in its own right.
See the full story here: https://www.fastcompany.com/40495777/coco-vr-is-the-best-way-to-experience-pixars-artistry
Disney Looks to Major Franchises for First Streaming Content
According to The Verge, Iger’s announcement about new TV series means that, “Disney [is] winning the online streaming service wars without firing a single shot.” Since content is “the great differentiator” among streaming services, exclusive content is key. But “licensed exclusivity isn’t a stable platform upon which to build a business” because “any deal can be altered or broken … which is why original programming has become such an incredible focus for streaming services.”
Iger has built Disney’s “movie-business dominance on the power of multi-billion-dollar acquisitions” with Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm, seeing “astronomical” returns. According to Iger, “the average global box office for Disney’s animated movies is now more than $665 million.”
That opens the possibility “where almost all of our blockbuster entertainment comes from a single source,” and could raise “a question of whether its service will so radically reset consumer expectations in the streaming market that a $9.99 Netflix subscription just won’t seem like a value any longer.”
See the full story here: http://www.etcentric.org/disney-looks-to-major-franchises-for-first-streaming-content/
Theme parks are blurring the lines between physical rides, movies, TV and virtual reality
Attendees check out the offerings on the Trade Floor at the IAAPA Attractions Expo 2016 in Orlando at the Orange County Convention Center. (Photo by courtesy of Robert Niles)
In addition to all the selling and buying of theme park attractions, food systems and merchandise line, there’s a lot of recruiting and hiring going on behind the scenes every year at IAAPA. The film and television industries have been tough businesses to break into in the past, but themed entertainment design firms have been hiring aggressively as they develop projects for parks in China and the Middle East. They’re not just designing theme parks, either. Design firms are creating projects for corporate factory tours, museums, touring productions and virtual and augmented reality installations all over the world.
VIRTUAL REALITY HITS THE AMUSEMENT PARKS AT ANNUAL EXPO
It’s a growing trend in the amusement park industry, said IAAPA’s Communications Director Susie Storey, and it stemmed from SeaWorld Orlando’s success implementing the technology.
“What we’re seeing on the floor are ideas that are growing upon that. If you can put it on a roller coaster, can you put it on a water slide? We’re seeing examples of that debuting on the show floor,” said Storey. More than 1,100 companies are showing off their products this week at the annual expo in Orlando.
See the full story here: http://www.wmfe.org/virtual-reality-hits-the-amusement-parks-at-annual-expo/80394