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“The future of gamification is nearly here with virtual and augmented reality features and the addition of artificial intelligence. These elements can personalize the experience and continually increase the challenge involved to keep the audience hooked. “ https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2017/06/22/how-to-add-gamification-to-your-marketing-strategy/#178cd53b5b3b

My mission statement is to push the boundries of the new tech tools that we are being given in the UX/ UI and prototyping design fields. This week I have been experimenting with Augemented and Virtual Reality. During the Summer Solstice I visited the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs and tested out a few augemented reality offerings using augmented reality dinosaurs to complement the existing dinosaur scenery and built the following website to include my examples and also to showcase A-Frame and Sketchfab which will be producing VR within websites which will be used for e-commerce and online shopping soon.

https://bcgallie.wixsite.com/jurassicpalace

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Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, thinker, and futurist famous for forecasting the pace of technology and predicting the world of tomorrow.

In this video, Kurzweil predicts when he thinks we’ll get programmable matter—or the ability to manipulate everyday objects at the atomic level—and what that means not just for the things around you, but for you as a person.

According to Kurzweil, beginning with virtual reality in the digital realm and moving into the physical with programmable matter, people will make themselves into avatars of other people, or even each other.

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A new article on #transhumanism and religion that’s worth reading:


Transhumanists are a group of people who prefer using science and technology to improve the human life. According to Zoltan Istvan, a declared atheists and key leader in the transhumanists movement, “Transhumanism is not a competition. It is simply a mode of being that embraces evolving the human being with science, reason and technology.”

The recent development in the transhumanism movement has seen the colonization of a few groups of religious people, who call themselves religious transhumanists. This group advocates using science, technology and religion to improve the human being. According to Zoltan, in the 21st Century, the formal religion will soon have no choice but to evolve and blend with the advancement in science and technology. Invention of churches in virtual reality, Robot pastors saving Artificial Intelligence through Christ’s redemption and even a Jesus Singularity are all soon going to be an important pillar in the religious movement and America’s future in general.

Although some religious conservatives are now rebuking Christian transhumanists and seeing them as pretenders, and renowned conservative writers like Wesley J. Smith are making jokes about it, the truth is that even the Bible advocates for the improvement of the human being. According to Zoltan, the only thing that lacks in the biblical narrative is that although it largely foreshadows the future, this future does not anticipate the merging of humans with machines, Transhumanist technologies, telepathy, ectogenesis, robotic hearts, brain implants, post-genderism, or artificial super intelligence.

As echoed by Zoltan, most transhumanists, including him, believe in reason. Accoring to them, living on faith, like most followers of Abrahamic religions and others do, is accepting to live vulnerably without the control of one’s life. Yet the society is quickly being transformed by science and technology, and Christians and other religious humans will soon be compelled to embrace this fact.

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Ahead of the fund’s launch on Saturday, Mr. Son said it would focus on investing in sectors including artificial intelligence, smart devices and semiconductors. “We already have lots in the pipeline,” he said. “We are investing into genome sequencing. We are investing in virtual-reality simulations, the games, and so on.”


Japan’s SoftBank Group and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund on Saturday launched the world’s largest technology fund, a nearly $100 billion vehicle that will steer capital to cutting-edge technologies in U.S. startups and other global firms.

In a statement, SoftBank said the fund secured $93 billion of committed capital. The so-called SoftBank Vision Fund is targeting a total of $100 billion within 6 months. The fund’s creation coincides with U.S. President Donald Trump’s two-day visit to Saudi Arabia, where he is…

To Read the Full Story.

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N” Mobile phone apps took center stage at Google’s annual developer conference on Wednesday as the search giant announced new features for its digital assistant and its popular photo app while devoting little time to the Android mobile operating system.

Addressing an audience of thousands of developers in Mountain View, California, Google executives delivered a broad-based update to their product portfolio which also included a slate of new features for the Google Home speaker, a job search tool and even a set of new virtual reality headsets.

In a sign of the ongoing strategic importance of Google Assistant, the company’s artificial intelligence-driven, voice-controlled digital assistant, Google announced it would make the product available on Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) iPhone, making a play for the higher end of the smartphone market and challenging Apple’s Siri feature on its own devices.

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  • Second Livestock is a unique application of virtual reality (VR) that could change animal husbandry and livestock farming.
  • Developed by design professor Austin Stewart, this VR free-range farm world is a safe haven for chickens.

Free-range livestock is going to the next level, thanks to a unique, if seemingly silly idea that has recently gone viral. Second Livestock is a free range world for chickens in virtual reality (VR). And yes, just like most of VR’s current applications, it actually works like a game — a massively-multiplayer one full of chickens and with no AI bots.

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