What is Virtual Reality?

•According to Winifred Gallagher, author of the recently published “Rapt”, we constantly make decisions determining what we are going to pay attention to. Any events, experiences, and activities not within the scope of our chosen interest will not exist to us as we immerse ourselves in our selected targets of concentration and focus. What we choose to concentrate on defines our state of consciousness and becomes our Reality.

• The fact that our mind and body may be “in two different places at the same time” is not a unique characteristic of Virtual Reality, and does not therefore create the need to refer to this immersive technology as “Virtual Reality”
–If we are deep within our own thoughts, and no longer mindful of our physical surroundings, are we in “virtual reality” ?
–If we are reading a news article on a website, and are so engrossed that we forget that we are late for a meeting, do we say that “virtual reality” interfered with “physical reality”?

•The power of “Virtual Reality” software is in its ability to emancipate the mind from the body, making physical “reality” a minor element of our Federated Reality.
–Federated Reality has two parts:
•Consciousness
•Physical Existence
–For our purposes, we will always need to address the requirements of Physical Existence and Consciousness. However, it is our objective to relegate Physical Existence to nothing more than a set of requirements for accessing a medium that will manipulate the Consciousness away from Physical Existence

•In other words, people have bodies: eyes, hands, etc. We must build software that provides convenient physical access. But after t hat, the vast majority of our attention will be turned to capturing the full attention of the user
–We use “federated” to mean that the two parts of Reality have a partnership, but are not so close as to be synonymous. They are individualy self-sustaining.

•At Étape Partners we believe that there is only one relevant reality, and it is defined as:
– A context of stimulation that acutely focuses awareness and defines our state of consciousness.

Accessibility and Other HR issues in Virtual Environments

Lets consider the use of VR environments for education and business. Further, lets limit the scope of thos discussion to using VR for business or education tasks that are essential, not for entertainment. Lets also consider that employees and students are required to use the VR platform to perform tasks. Now that we have the basic discussion scoped...
In my opinion, it is essential that serious users of VR tools be represented in VR in a way that allows other users of the system to clearly identify that person to the extent that they feel a sense of presense with a colleague or fellow student. In most cases, VR is being presented as a tool to help reestablish co-worker intimacy that is lost as the workforce become disintermediated by physical distance. Buyers of these system want to create more engaging and effective communication, create deeper bonds among users, and finally use these enhanced relationships to help achieve business results. Therefore, it is essential that VR is a direct extension of everyday business operations, not a parallel universe that has no impact on real life. In some ways, its no different than email. I suppose that when email first came on the scene, many peopel felt it was a "false" communication because they did not use the phone. The same was likely said of the phone when it was first used(face to face is real, the phone is not). However, time as passed, and quite often email is accepted as a more indelible mode of communication because it is "permanent". surely we accept email as a tool of business, and life in general, and we would never say that "it was just an email, not real". Further, in business it is essential that we trust that when we receive an email from "Bob Jones" it is truly Bob Jones that sent the email. If we have any doubts, the business value of the communication is lost. Why would this be any different in VR? Now, we know that VR is multi-sensory. We See and Hear. So when I meet Bob Jones in VR, I must immediately trust that I am seeing and hearing Bob Jones. But, VR easily enables the altering of Bob Jones. Lets say the following:
1. Business communication should not be dilluted by questions of identity
2. VR creates a multitude of opportunities to "adjust" identity
3. Users may have a wide variety of reasons for wanted to adjust their identity
4. Typical corporate policies have guidelines on appearance and behavior

There is no way the questions of accessibility, equality, employee rights, etc will be answered with finality or clarity in the near future. these debates will continue for quite some time. Key questions become:

1. Just because something is possible in VR, do employee have the right or entitlement to leverage those possibilities?
2. In what cases should the possibilities of VR be leveraged to the benefit of employees?
3. Should there be two sets of rules in a company: one for VR, one for Physical?

Some use cases:
1. I work from home and dress in shorts and t-shirt. My avatar wears a suit. Is this a misrepresentation of who I am?
2. I am in a wheelchair. My avatar walks. Is this ok?
3. I am legally a man, but dress like a woman in the workplace. What should my avatar look like?
4. VR can alter your voice. Should "voice fonts" be permitted?
5. VR can make it look like I am in the virtual office while I am actually sleeping. is this ok?

to be continues

How fast is Glacial?

I've had SME's tell me that the speed of change in Healthcare is "glacial". And some environmentalists will tell you that our glaciers are melting "incredibly fast". So how fast is fast?

Great article in the WSJ today. so how fast is fast?

http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2009/08/26/the-convergence-of-health-care-information-technology/

First blog post and some thoughts

first and foremost, this blog will be used to share my thoughts on Virtual Reality, and how it is evolving into a useful technology in a variety of industries. As a producer of VR tools, as well as consultant, author, and speaker on the subject of VR, I am going to talking about a wide variety of things. I will do my best to publish thought provoking pieces. My main interest is dissecting the problem space that is targeted by the current wave of VR tools, with the goal being to determine if we are making up problems to solve, or if the technology is truly addressing existing problems in a manner that could not be replaced by something that is faster, better, cheaper.