Advanced Human Communication Technologies
What insights about people and technology are needed to better understand the rise of the digital and virtual, and its intersection with real and physical worlds?
To help answer this question, mediaX sponsored eight research projects (led by Stanford faculty) exploring new insights at the intersection of virtual and physical worlds. The projects were launched in the Fall of 2007 and span a wide range of topics, including: education and learning architecture, sensor networks, the psychology of presence and place, mixed media and mixed reality for cultural curation and legal regimes.
The research initiative highlighted projects that examine the interaction of physical objects and their virtual counterparts, especially the potential and implications of synchronizing or harmonizing virtual worlds with physical ones. These projects explored psychological effects, developed novel learning architectures and experimented with sensors and other measuring and tracking devices. They addressed the broad influence of computer technology on human communication, with an emphasis on the intersection of objects in real space with virtual world information, and the potential to leverage computer- and/or sensor-embedded objects and context-aware computing for the development of new design, prototyping and communication systems.
Research Initiatives
Jeremy Bailenson: Real Time Tracking, Detecting and Correcting of Motion
Diane Bailey: Exploring the Virtual in the Physical and the Physical in the Virtual
Pat Hanrahan: Virtual Sensor Networks
Lawrence Lessig: Virtual Jurisdictions
Jeffrey T. Schnapp: SPEEDLimits
John Perry: Pragmatics of Computer Assisted Communication and Communication about Virtual Worlds