scholarly journals Internet communications in the information age: socio-cultural and environmental context

2021 ◽  
Vol 258 ◽  
pp. 07051
Author(s):  
Olena Sidorkina ◽  
Tetiana Poda ◽  
Oksana Skyba ◽  
Natalia Chenbai ◽  
Ivan Skyba

The article deals with specifics of Internet communications functioning in the information technology era. The emergence and development of Internet communications in human life promote the creation of virtual reality, which significantly changes the forms of relationships between people. Instead of personal meetings and direct communication, people get used to communicating in virtual space. It affects their professional activity, studying, personal life, leisure, etc. The latest forms of Internet communication not only open up to mankind the unique opportunities for a person’s creative self-realization but also make a new socio-cultural reality. Therefore, it is necessary to study the peculiarities of the new forms of Internet communications’ functioning and their impact on social development.

2022 ◽  
pp. 130-144

In this chapter, the author introduces the reader to the importance of virtual reality in human life, avatars, and communicating with digital characters and demonstrates the pervasiveness of technology's penetration into our lives, not only physically, cognitively, and emotionally, but also environmentally. As the created interpreters and representatives of scientific work as the substance subject of scientific history, avatars participate, along with robots, cyborgs, and artificial intelligence, in the desubjectivization, biological denaturalization, and despiritualization of man and death of biological life. The ‘cyborgization' of humans in virtual space extends the landscape of the discussion on cyborgoethics.


2022 ◽  
Vol 354 ◽  
pp. 00055
Author(s):  
Alin Irimia ◽  
Emilian Ghicioi ◽  
Daniel Pupăzan ◽  
Cristian Nicolescu

In recent years in the virtual reality the developers succeeded in creating an artificial environment that simulates reality so that the user has the impression of an almost real physical presence in the virtual world. By overlapping and synchronizing the projected images with spatial sounds and even forces that interact with the user, there is a detachment of the user from the real environment and an all-encompassing involvement in the virtual world. The virtual reality is present in aviation, medicine, military training and other top fields. The advantages of using the virtual environment are obvious for areas where inexperience can cause very high loss of life and material loss. Although the participants are immersed in the scenario of the virtual environment, the errors produced allow an evaluation of the mistakes made and their correction, the experience gained being then used in professional activity in the real world. Through the experience of the virtual environment, the fear of various dangers can be overcome, so that the objectives of the exercise can be fulfilled. The aim of the paper is to offer to the rescuers opportunities to interact with the elements of the virtual space to fulfill the purpose of the exercise.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc-Aurele Racicot

These days, is there a topic more significant and provocative than the protection of privacy in the private sector? The importance of this topic has been highlighted since the Canadian Parliament adopted the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act which came into full force on 1 January 2004 and which is scheduled for review in 2006. Although it seems that everywhere we turn, the word "privacy" and its companion PIPEDA are at centre stage, many say that this attention is unwarranted and a knee-jerk reaction to the information age where one can run but cannot hide. Like it or not, we are subject to the prying eyes of cameras in public places, the tracking and trailing of Internet activities, the selling of address lists and other such listings, and the synthesizing by marketers of frightful amounts of personal information that, when pulled together, reveals a lot about our personal life, our ancestry, our relationships, our interests and our spending habits.


Author(s):  
Robin Horst ◽  
Ramtin Naraghi-Taghi-Off ◽  
Linda Rau ◽  
Ralf Dörner

AbstractEvery Virtual Reality (VR) experience has to end at some point. While there already exist concepts to design transitions for users to enter a virtual world, their return from the physical world should be considered, as well, as it is a part of the overall VR experience. We call the latter outro-transitions. In contrast to offboarding of VR experiences, that takes place after taking off VR hardware (e.g., HMDs), outro-transitions are still part of the immersive experience. Such transitions occur more frequently when VR is experienced periodically and for only short times. One example where transition techniques are necessary is in an auditorium where the audience has individual VR headsets available, for example, in a presentation using PowerPoint slides together with brief VR experiences sprinkled between the slides. The audience must put on and take off HMDs frequently every time they switch from common presentation media to VR and back. In a such a one-to-many VR scenario, it is challenging for presenters to explore the process of multiple people coming back from the virtual to the physical world at once. Direct communication may be constrained while VR users are wearing an HMD. Presenters need a tool to indicate them to stop the VR session and switch back to the slide presentation. Virtual visual cues can help presenters or other external entities (e.g., automated/scripted events) to request VR users to end a VR session. Such transitions become part of the overall experience of the audience and thus must be considered. This paper explores visual cues as outro-transitions from a virtual world back to the physical world and their utility to enable presenters to request VR users to end a VR session. We propose and investigate eight transition techniques. We focus on their usage in short consecutive VR experiences and include both established and novel techniques. The transition techniques are evaluated within a user study to draw conclusions on the effects of outro-transitions on the overall experience and presence of participants. We also take into account how long an outro-transition may take and how comfortable our participants perceived the proposed techniques. The study points out that they preferred non-interactive outro-transitions over interactive ones, except for a transition that allowed VR users to communicate with presenters. Furthermore, we explore the presenter-VR user relation within a presentation scenario that uses short VR experiences. The study indicates involving presenters that can stop a VR session was not only negligible but preferred by our participants.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 3090
Author(s):  
Sangwook Yoo ◽  
Cheongho Lee ◽  
Seongah Chin

To experience a real soap bubble show, materials and tools are required, as are skilled performers who produce the show. However, in a virtual space where spatial and temporal constraints do not exist, bubble art can be performed without real materials and tools to give a sense of immersion. For this, the realistic expression of soap bubbles is an interesting topic for virtual reality (VR). However, the current performance of VR soap bubbles is not satisfying the high expectations of users. Therefore, in this study, we propose a physically based approach for reproducing the shape of the bubble by calculating the measured parameters required for bubble modeling and the physical motion of bubbles. In addition, we applied the change in the flow of the surface of the soap bubble measured in practice to the VR rendering. To improve users’ VR experience, we propose that they should experience a bubble show in a VR HMD (Head Mounted Display) environment.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104687812110082
Author(s):  
Omamah Almousa ◽  
Ruby Zhang ◽  
Meghan Dimma ◽  
Jieming Yao ◽  
Arden Allen ◽  
...  

Objective. Although simulation-based medical education is fundamental for acquisition and maintenance of knowledge and skills; simulators are often located in urban centers and they are not easily accessible due to cost, time, and geographic constraints. Our objective is to develop a proof-of-concept innovative prototype using virtual reality (VR) technology for clinical tele simulation training to facilitate access and global academic collaborations. Methodology. Our project is a VR-based system using Oculus Quest as a standalone, portable, and wireless head-mounted device, along with a digital platform to deliver immersive clinical simulation sessions. Instructor’s control panel (ICP) application is designed to create VR-clinical scenarios remotely, live-stream sessions, communicate with learners and control VR-clinical training in real-time. Results. The Virtual Clinical Simulation (VCS) system offers realistic clinical training in virtual space that mimics hospital environments. Those VR clinical scenarios are customizable to suit the need, with high-fidelity lifelike characters designed to deliver interactive and immersive learning experience. The real-time connection and live-stream between ICP and VR-training system enables interactive academic learning and facilitates access to tele simulation training. Conclusions. VCS system provides innovative solutions to major challenges associated with conventional simulation training such as access, cost, personnel, and curriculum. VCS facilitates the delivery of academic and interactive clinical training that is similar to real-life settings. Tele-clinical simulation systems like VCS facilitate necessary academic-community partnerships, as well as global education network between resource-rich and low-income countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Jingyi Li ◽  
Ceenu George ◽  
Andrea Ngao ◽  
Kai Holländer ◽  
Stefan Mayer ◽  
...  

Ubiquitous technology lets us work in flexible and decentralised ways. Passengers can already use travel time to be productive, and we envision even better performance and experience in vehicles with emerging technologies, such as virtual reality (VR) headsets. However, the confined physical space constrains interactions while the virtual space may be conceptually borderless. We therefore conducted a VR study (N = 33) to examine the influence of physical restraints and virtual working environments on performance, presence, and the feeling of safety. Our findings show that virtual borders make passengers touch the car interior less, while performance and presence are comparable across conditions. Although passengers prefer a secluded and unlimited virtual environment (nature), they are more productive in a shared and limited one (office). We further discuss choices for virtual borders and environments, social experience, and safety responsiveness. Our work highlights opportunities and challenges for future research and design of rear-seat VR interaction.


Leonardo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jung Nam ◽  
Daniel F. Keefe

Spatial Correlation is an interactive digital artwork that provides a new window into the process of creating freeform handcrafted virtual sculptures while standing in an immersive Cave virtual reality (VR) environment. The piece originates in the lab, where the artist’s full-body, dance-like sculpting process is recorded using a combination of spatial tracking devices and an array of nine synchronized video cameras. Later, in the gallery, these raw data are reinterpreted as part of an interactive visualization that relates the three spaces in which the sculpture exists: 1) the physical lab/studio space in which the sculpture was created, 2) the digital virtual space in which the sculpture is mathematically defined and stored, and 3) the physical gallery space in which viewers now interact with the sculpture.


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