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Good morning,
Last week, we asked for your help identifying people and organizations across disciplines and industries who are working with XR and emerging technologies through a lens of equity, accessibility, and inclusion.
Our goal was to create an informal resource for learning and collaboration among people and organizations in our community who prioritize social justice issues in their work. RLab was created in part to facilitate critical research and conversations around the social and cultural impacts of emerging technologies, and to actively close gaps in equity and access through education, training, entrepreneurship, and corporate innovation programs. We always want to be aware of work that is aligned with our mission, and we are taking this opportunity to learn about and reaffirm our commitment to include more diverse perspectives in our convenings, content, and programs. Our hope is that publishing this collection helps others in that way as well.
You can view the list here. Thank you to everyone who contributed to this resource. We're still collecting submissions here.
To be clear, we know that lists do not solve the problem. But we would encourage anyone looking at this collection of people, ideas, and projects to consider the role that each of us can play in building a just society.
As Ori Inbar depicted in the speculative future he composed for his opening remarks at AWE 2020 (below), the fusion of spatial computing and artificial intelligence has the potential to become "a juggernaut of social good" in the next decade. But to get to that future while avoiding dystopian outcomes, he acknowledged activists would have to work tirelessly to ensure that companies and governments are held to account. We'll continue to share projects and ideas that move us closer to that future in this newsletter every week, and we hope to hear from you if you have feedback or a project to share. Reach me at justin@rlab.nyc.
-Justin |
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| MUST-READS |
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| A Spatial New World in 2030 |
AWE co-founder Ori Inbar conducted a little thought experiment to open the AWE 2020 conference: what will the spatial world of 2030 look like? Inbar's talk is a message from his "future-self in 2030," who's sending text back in time via the Quantum Internet (bear with me).
Ori's talk covers possibilities like millions of workers getting re-skilled with Just-in-Time training, billions using a fusion of AR, VR, and AI called Spatial Artificial Intelligence, (highly regulated) human augmentation, and the advent of 6G.
13 min read |
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| Snap Announces Minis to Bring Other Apps Into Snapchat |
Snap is introducing a swath of new features to enhance user experience. Last month, The Information reported that the company was planning to let third-party developers build Minis (pared-down versions of mobile apps) that run inside Snapchat - an approach already used by WeChat. During Snap's virtual Partner Summit on Thursday, the company also announced that Headspace, Movie Tickets, and other apps were now accessible in the Snapchat window.
In an interview with The Verge, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said Minis will help the company expand to ecommerce and make it easy for Snapchatters to share experiences with friends: "Let's say you're getting ready with your friends, or your school dance is two weeks from now - you can actually shop together with your friends, which I think could be a really fun experience."
Snap also announced three significant additions to their AR platform: voice search, Local Lenses, and SnapML. With the voice search feature, you can tell Snapchat to show the Lenses you want to use, rather than swipe. Meanwhile, SnapML will allow users to import their trained models and augment their environment, "Creating visual filters that transform scenes in more sophisticated ways." And Local Lenses will turn public Snaps shared by users into spatial data that can be used to create 3D maps.
3 min read
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| COMMUNITY NEWS |
Alex Young, founder at Virti (RLab Accelerator Fall '19) writes about the future of work and training for Forbes, citing one recent study that showed an over 8,000% increase in search traffic for remote learning, among other related terms. Read more.
IL3X (RLab Accelerator Spring '20) is the latest startup profiled in a series of conversations with entrepreneurs affiliated with RLab. Erika Lamperti, cofounder at IL3X, an early-stage startup developing AR fashion for digital beings and brands, talks about building the fashion studio of tomorrow. Read more.
In case you missed it: check out previous conversations with Maor Cohen of n*gram health, a startup that develops therapeutic VR experiences for seniors, and Conor Russomanno of OpenBCI, a startup that develops open-source brain-computer interface (BCI) software and hardware. |
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| EVENTS & CLASSES |
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UPCOMING CLASSES AT RLAB
Online Workshop: 3D Capture: Scanning Techniques, Workflows & Applications
June 8-15
This online workshop is a deep dive into creating and optimizing 3D scanned content for various platforms like WebGL, VR, AR, and 3D printing. Includes 10-15 hours of content, instruction and assignments over the course of one week. Register Here
Online Course: UX Design Principles for AR & VR
Starts June 16
This 2-month online certificate course gives UX designers and product managers an understanding of how to design UX for AR & VR technologies. Provided in partnership with Emeritus and NYU Tandon. Register Here
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Event: Immersive Innovation: The Entertainment Experience in a Post-Covid World
June 17, 4PM
Hear from immersive technology experts from Phoria and Niantic on how to improve user engagement and create powerful entertainment experiences for the post COVID user. Register Here.
Event: Virtual Production in the Covid Era: AR, VR, and Animation
June 18, 7PM-8PM
Free webinar hosted by LIU Media Arts Department with Elizabeth Barelli, Jesse Damiani, Alon Grinshpoon and Johanna Salazar. Register Here.
Event: HP Reveal Breakthrough VR Headset
June 25, 11:30AM-12:30PM
XR Intelligence webinar for a sneak peek into the latest HP headset, its capabilities and the applications for which it can deliver the greatest ROI. Register Here.
Event: Veterans Future Lab Summit
June 29-30
Free annual event bringing together veteran founders, investors, and supporters to highlight opportunities and reveal resources for veteran-led ventures. Register Here.
OPPORTUNITIES & JOBS
Opportunity: Kaleidoscope Grants
Due June 29
New grant opportunities from Kaleidoscope include: Activist Lens Grant, $500 monthly cash prize to documentary projects that capture injustices in “real time"; Black Realities Grant, $1,000 monthly cash prize for media projects that explore the experiences of the Black global community; and The Femme Futures Grant, $1,000 monthly cash prize to the best XR project currently in development by a female artist. Learn More.
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INDUSTRY NEWS
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| Data Dive: Pinterest Visual Searches Triple |
Pinterest recently added a new Shop tab to its Lens search results; the app now displays similar-looking merchandise, complete with retail links. AR Insider's Mike Bolland notes that "by cultivating shopping and product-discovery use cases, [the company] sets itself up to monetize in native ways." This comes at a time when visual searches have tripled compared to last year, according to Pinterest.
4 min read |
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| RIP, Apps? Google Teases the Future of Smartphone Interfaces |
Google recently launched Android 11 Beta with a new area called Controls. You enter Controls with a long-press of the power button, which pulls up useful toggles like your credit card, boarding passes, and smart-home controls - without the need to juggle individual apps.
Google group product manager Allen Huang, who works on Android's UI, says Controls is meant to be "the place you use on your phone when you need to interact with the physical world." While the initial focus of Controls is on smart home toggles, it hints at Android's next evolutionary step: "it's easy to imagine how the Controls area might one day work to unlock the door to your vehicle as your car keys do today."
On the Apple front: last month the company received a patent for what they call "augmented reality interface for interacting with displayed maps." In a nutshell, the company describes a process where an iPhone user points their camera at their surroundings and gets context information on points of interest, as well as navigation instructions - also see Google Maps' AR navigation feature.
3 min read |
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