The future of work is virtual

Originally posted at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-work-virtual-linda-ricci

#longpost #musing #futureofwork #XR #virtualreality

When #Covid first hit, I don’t think anyone could foresee just how huge – and ultimately, permanent – its impact would be. I’ve been thinking a lot about the ramifications, through the lens of XR among others (but ultimately, rooted in human behavior!).

From the beginning it seems apparent that many businesses would realize that a #distributedworkforce not only often works, but is an attractive option: cheaper than maintaining office space, but also the ability to recruit talent from anywhere. For people, many now prefer the humanity of #workingfromhome. Cue the home designer of the future, who will have to make sure that “work space” is built into living spaces of the future. Also, can only imagine the impact on human migration! If you can live anywhere, why wouldn’t you?!

But our technology to do so is adapted from the before times. We lose a sense of community when interactions are limited to Brady Bunch-style #zoom calls, let alone all the “soft interactions” that came from running into someone in the hall, or sharing lunch time in the break room. It’s difficult to harness soft skills when there is no informal interactions.

Virtual Reality has the ability to recreate that sense of community with 3D environments where people can interact much more like they would naturally. Platforms like ENGAGE XR Holdings Plc and Spatial are emerging to provide those environments; it is surprising how easily you interact and engage with others. They call it embodiment, & it’s real: someone might physically be thousands of miles away, yet you feel like you’re standing next to them. NB I’ve honestly had more *real* conversations with people/avatars in virtual reality than I’ve even had in a group on Zoom.

Not only that, but you can share visual assets and experiences just like the real world. Brainstorm with everyone posting visuals on a board, or gather around a 3d prototype, which everyone can walk around and try out – it’s so much more than just sitting around a virtual table together.

{Big} Companies are starting to create immersive spaces that replicate their offices, as they are dealing with new employees who’ve never met anyone in the company – and are not gelling and/or feeling like part of the company. Creating a sense of belonging is important to keep people productive and happy.

The future is quite clearly being brought to you by technology that will enable geographically distributed workforces to succeed. Send a new employee a computer, comfy chair and headset – no cubicle needed! Enhancing our lives, IMHO. A win for people, a win for companies. Not so much for commercial real estate.

Augmented reality (#AR), virtual reality (#VR), Internet of Things (#IoT) & Artificial intelligence (#AI) are increasingly converging to bring us the future where we seamlessly move between reality and digital, where digital will overlay and enhance our daily experience, and where real human connections will be forged across a still very large planet.

That’s it for today out loud musing. A lot more to say though.

Note: I did not use the word #Metaverse. Intentionally. Because all of this is part of our enhanced digital future – hence, the Metaverse. “Meta”verse. Another dimension to our reality, brought to you by a set of  interconnected digital / sometimes immersive experiences. I’m a bit allergic to all the hype though. It’s a real concept that will really happen – but not as many think.

That’s another #reallylongpost.

  • The future of work is virtual

    Originally posted at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-work-virtual-linda-ricci #longpost #musing #futureofwork #XR #virtualreality When #Covid first hit, I don’t think anyone could foresee just how huge – and ultimately, permanent – its impact would be. I’ve been thinking a lot about the ramifications, through the lens of XR among others (but ultimately, rooted in human behavior!). From the beginning…



  • Let’s go to the “Metaverse”

    Reposted from ww.linkedin.com/posts/lindaricci_metaverse-concept-digitalexperiences-activity-6917537794756067329-WT5N #virtualreality #augmentedreality #VR #AR #web3 #mytwocents #opinion


  • MIT Reality Hack Hackathon: Part 2 – Thoughts & Impressions

    This is part two of my coverage of the MIT Reality Hack where I talk about a few of the projects, and some high level impressions.


MIT Reality Hack Hackathon: Part 2 – Thoughts & Impressions

This is part two of my coverage of the MIT Reality Hack (part one is here) where I talk about a few of the projects, and some high level impressions. Diversity rocks!! Such a pleasure to see so many women, people of color, and all ages represented..

I’ve been using GIIDE’s software to bring a multimedia approach to my posts; this is the transcript of that post.


So now that I’ve talke about what being at the MIT Reality Hack Hackathon last week was like, I want to talk about some of the projects that I really liked. And general impressions of the event as well.

First off I want to say how heartened I was by how many women there were; my guesstimate is that about 25% of the participants were women. There were also a fair number of people of color, as well as a decent age spread. Two of the women hackers were 60 plus, which I think is fantastic. And a few men in their 50s who by their own accounts had been there for the first wave of the internet, and were looking forward to being involved with this next generation of Web 3.0.

Hackers had an assortment of hardware and software products (sdks, APIs etc) to pick and choose from, including Microsoft Hololenses, Snap’s augmented reality Spectacles, which are not yet on the market; Magic Leap‘s second generation mixed reality headset, also not yet on the market, and Looking Glass Factory‘s 8k holographic displays.

Skinetic was there with a haptic vest which is still in kickstarter phase and ARItize maps was there with their persistent augmented reality tools (you can create augmented reality and permanently tie is to a location). Seek XR was there with their the 3D asset AR configurator, mobile scene creator planner, and integrator, and Solana and Symmetry with their web 3, blockchain tools.

All this stuff that wasn’t on the market yet, leads me to think the companies were using the hackathon to test their products with developers.

Participants could use any of these (or any combination of these) that they wanted to bring their projects to life (how much fun is that?!).

One of my favorites was the group designing responsive augmented reality. So, in the brower world, responsive websites reorganize themselves to most effectively and intuitively fit to the viewers screen. Think about how many different screen sizes there are, between all the phone, tablets, and computers. Responsive design automatically shifts everything around so that the viewer has the optimal experience.

But this hasn’t been done for augmented reality yet. This group designed a 3d augmented reality installation for “the Sanders experience” – a riff on a Bernie Sanders meme. It was a fully 3d typography in the round that was interactive (you could play with the letters) and each line of typography had a sound. But their point was, I could be seeing this in a large space, where there’s plenty of room to see it large. Maybe though, I’m seeing it in my living room. They built a way to have it scan the surroundings and adjust the size od the 3D AR experience to automatically fit. Genius in my humble opinion; that tech has huge commercial applications for the future of advertising and experiences.

Another was technology that combined blockchain NFT art with community and geolocation. Their idea was to create a permanent community based augmented reality installation using shards – an installation that paid homage to the native americans who’s lands MIT is built on. Each shard had an NFT token minted against it, and each one could be bought; once bought, it would be placed as a piece of the final, whole statue – which when finished, would permanently be available to see. Every time one of the NFTd shards sold, 40% would be paid to the tribe the statue honored. I love the community building aspect of this story, and could see brands doing something similar to create a community-based augmented reality project for fans of their brand.

And the third project that really stood out for me is the group that developed a voice directed programming interface for VR design- you said “sofa” and a sofa would drop in, you said, “larger” and it would get bigger, etc. Placement was still with your hand, but it was a fantastic step towards accomodating people with accessability challenges. It’s essentially visual programming but with voice interaction.

So many other amazing projects – there were 80 projects and I didn’t see all of them – but these three really stood out for me.

Participating is an amazing way to get noticed if you’re a developer or designer. Every company was there to identify and possibly recruit a hot dev – or identify a project with commercial potential. a woman representing Apple literally stood up during one of the evening parties and announced point blank that she was there to recruit, and anyone interested should talk to her. In addition, I chatted with the people working on the projects I mentioned above and talked about the commercial possibilities of what they were doing, and they’d already been approached by companies to do just that.

So I hope you enjoyed my little wrap up of the MIT Reality Hack Hackathon; let me know what you think!

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