Electronic empathy: meet the next wave of virtual reality
“Experiential marketing is about intimacy at scale,” says Jason Alan Snyder, chief technology officer at Momentum Worldwide. “The danger for brands is that the algorithms we increasingly use are pushing us into ever-narrowing information silos and connecting us with tribes of people we agree with. Empathy is about understanding different perspectives and VR can alter perceptions. My hope is to leverage VR into a connective tissue by creating empathetic groups.”
How long will it be before we can touch what we see in AR...
Davis uses video to virtualise physical content so that it can interact with virtual content, so that when you see – on your smartphone – a Pokémon interact with a flexible object, you also see that object react.
“We are still some way from producing real-time dynamic AR, which conveys reactions and behaviours as well as experiences and interactions.”
A recent Virtual Futures Salon highlighted that electronic empathy is about emotional involvement and does not require hyper-realism. “The key is to establish an emotional connection between the consumer and the experience – it is not about the technology,” says Los Angeles based digital content adviser Scott Nocas,...
“Empathy is about discovering things that we share and engage with emotionally,” says Snyder. “Immersive technology needs to focus on connecting humans to humans in a profound way. It can change people’s perceptions, and if used properly it has the potential to change the world.”
See the full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2016/sep/08/electronic-empathy-virtual-reality-pokemon-go-oculus