PBS NewsHour | Tricking the brain with transformative virtual reality

December 20, 2013

PBS NewsHour | Want to have a just-like-real-life fantasy experience without leaving your living room? Virtual reality technology is already employed by certain industries, but economics correspondent Paul Solman considers the variety of applications it could have in the consumer market in the future.

Force for good or ill? Economics correspondent Solman explores the latest virtual reality technology with Stanford University’s Jeremy Bailenson, and weighs its societal impact with Jaron Lanier, author of Who Owns the Future? Video from December 18, 2013.

note: Ray Kurzweil featured at 4 minutes, 30 seconds.

related reading:
PBS | NewsHour
Stanford University | Virtual Human Interaction Lab: profile
Stanford University | Virtual Human Interaction Lab: videos
Stanford University | Virtual Human Interactive Lab: projects
Stanford University | Virtual Human Interaction Lab: news coverage
profile | Oculus VR


related viewing from PBS NewsHour:
video | How virtual reality games can transform society, prosperity

PBS NewsHour | Video games give players super powers and transport them to new worlds. How might this technology be used to transform society and your financial prospects? Economics correspondent Paul Solman visits researchers who use virtual reality to study its effects on human behavior in the real world. Video from July 11, 2013.


related viewing from Stanford University Virtual Human Interaction Lab:
video | Laboratory tour

Stanford University | Stanford’s newly renovated Virtual Human Interaction Lab was specifically designed for psychological experimentation in virtual worlds, says Associate Professor of Communication Jeremy Bailenson. “We integrate three virtual senses in a way that’s very psychologically persuasive: sight, sound and touch.”

The state-of-the-art lab also offers a glimpse of the near future in household entertainment. “We’re using this cutting-edge lab to try to think ahead by a few years to predict what household technology is going to be like and how that’s going to affect people,” Bailenson said.

related reading:
Stanford University | “Take a tour of the virtual future at Stanford”


related viewing from Stanford University Virtual Human Interaction Lab:
video | Infinite Reality book trailer

HarperCollins  | How achievable are the virtual experiences seen in The Matrix, Tron, and James Cameron’s Avatar? Do our brains know where “reality” ends and “virtual” begins?

In Infinite Reality, Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson, two pioneering experts in the field of virtual reality, reveal how the human brain behaves in virtual environments and examine where radical new developments in digital technology will lead us in five, fifty, and five hundred years.

related reading:
book | Infinite Reality


related viewing from Stanford University Virtual Human Interaction Lab:
video | Stanford University Virtual Human Interaction Lab research alumni talk

Stanford University | VHIL’s director, Jeremy Bailenson, gives a presentation about his research on avatars, his Transformed Social Interactions (TSI) theory, and new communication technologies.


related viewing from Stanford University Virtual Human Interaction Lab:
video | Stanford University virtual reality changes real-life behavior

Stanford University | Cutting down a virtual redwood with a virtual chainsaw may lead you to save trees by recycling more paper. That finding is an example of how real-world behavior can be changed by immersing people in virtual reality environments — a notion that is at the heart of work under way in Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab.