The governance of the ‘metaverse’, underpinned by extended reality (XR) technology, has garnered increasing attention from policymakers, industry, and regulators. Despite highly productive critiques of industrial governance practices and initiatives – such as those focused on responsible innovation and diversity, equity, and inclusion within XR – there has been limited comprehensive examination of XR governance…
Last month, Apple revealed its long-teased Vision Pro headset, a device that uses augmented reality technology to project a digital image onto the physical world. But, Apple revealed, it won’t work — at least out of the box — if you wear glasses. Instead, you’ll need to buy inserts to attach to the device lens. Apple’s…
AR and VR intersect (and often conflict) with expectations of privacy in public space in ways that will only become more salient over time. There is a varied and sustained engagement with the topic in the AR literature, which act as sophisticated surveillance systems. As Mark Pesce notes – “[f]ar less a new beginning than…
Both augmented reality and virtual reality have increasingly pushed to become key players in the workplace. AR has had a much longer history within the workplace, particularly as an assistive technology in manufacturing industries. There is a body of research in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) that presents experimental cases – with Funk…
The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) celebrated its 70th year of operation this year. In recent years, the festival has been expanding to include extended reality (XR) content. This year marked MIFF’s most ambitious XR offering to date, with twelve XR pieces presented both in-person and in a digital recreation of Melbourne’s iconic art-deco Capitol…
According to Mark Zuckerberg, the “metaverse” – which the Meta founder describes as “an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content – you are in it” – will radically change our lives. So far, Meta’s main metaverse product is a virtual reality playground called Horizon Worlds. When Zuckerberg announced his company’s metaverse push in October 2021, the prevailing sentiment was that it was something nobody had asked for, nor particularly wanted.
A growing body of research has documented multiple challenges with commercial content moderation conducted by social media platforms today, from appalling working conditions for moderators who are overwhelmingly located in the Global South, to the issue of biased algorithms, and the lack of transparency and accountability in moderation decisions. Moderation is no doubt an incredibly difficult task.
Gender in extended reality Kate Euphemia Clark, Marcus Carter and Ben Egliston Gender-based discrimination in mixed reality is a pernicious problem, both at the level of experiencing gameplay, and more deeply at the level of the technology itself. This will only become more pervasive as metaverse products become more entwined in our work and social…