Lily Snyder

Here are five great podcast episodes I’ve found about virtual reality.

The future is shaped by technology but technology is shaped by us.

Soonish

Soonish

Episode 2.06: Looking Virtual Reality In The Eye

Virtual Reality – it has the power to amaze and the power to deceive. VR is finally starting to deliver in education, the arts, and storytelling. I love Soonish because their motto is “The future is shaped by technology but technology is shaped by us.”

This episode follows the host as he experiences a VR story exhibit about the psychology of war. The exhibit is called, “The Enemy” by Karim Ben Khelifa. He believes photo journalism is losing its impact. That’s what led him to VR, to see if he could make an impact by looking at the “the enemy” in the eyes.

Trailblazers

VR: What’s Possibly in Reality?

This is a nice, brief episode about virtual reality. In it, Walter Isaacson talks about the history of VR devices like Nintendo’s Power Glove and the ups and downs of the VR Hype Cycle. In the 1990’s the cost of computing was so high, it was too hard to monetize. Soon, the World Wide Web stole the rest of virtual reality’s thunder. Media hype, business investment, and entertainment shift their focus to the web.

Now, virtual reality is entering people’s homes as new iterations of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are released into the market. We’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg for VR’s potential in medicine, research, entertainment, and the enterprise.

Rocket

Episode 215: Oculus Rift Tea Time

This was an awesome podcast episode to listen too. Rocket hosts, Brianna Wu, Christina Warren, and Simone De Rochefort, interview Blake J. Harris. Harris wrote The History of the Future (which I’m currently reading) about how Oculus was founded through their acquisition by Facebook. I thought the interview as fascinating. It’s definitely a must listen to anyone interested in VR, history, and big tech.

Surviving the Future of Work Podcast

Empowering Organizations with Augmented & Virtual Reality

This episode is about the ROI and scalability of virtual reality in business.

Immersive tech is on a spectrum. The simplest is a heads up display (a digital readout). Next is interactive; wherever you look you can place an object. VR and AR come together as a user interface for other technologies for AI, IoT, and the block-chain.

What is the business case to use VR and AR? The more immersive an experience is, the stronger the retention. People in VR hold 80-90% retention because they actively listen, do, and experience emotion which create strong memories. Right now, people have to use it in order to “get it”. This is an issue the original Oculus team ran into when marketing the Oculus (The History of the Future).

Creating a module is expensive but it is scalable. You don’t need assistance to run training. You create it once and deploy it around the globe.

If it’s about computing, don’t try to make a human do it. If it’s about judging and collaborating, humans are better at it. Education is not about efficiency. Our brains have to be challenged. We have to see something that doesn’t make sense, that challenges our previous perceptions. We need to be effective intakers of information. We can use VR to increase the ability for students to absorb information.

The Virtual Reality Podcast

Virtual and Augmented Reality Education with Mike McCready

Basically any episode from this podcast is great to learn about augmented and virtual reality. They focus on AR/VR in education and the enterprise. I want to share their episode with Mike McCready (see the VR Book Club). He started a VR course at Lethbridge College. This episode is about Mike and the course. Enjoy!

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Is there a podcast about virtual or augmented reality that I missed? Let me know in the comments below!

Featured Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash