Shunichi Kasahara - Cybernetic Humanity (Metaverse and Virtual Reality Public Lecture at OIST)
Channel: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST)
Date: 2023-05-29

Metaverse and Virtual Reality - The Science and Technology of Interacting with Digital Worlds Public Lecture at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST).
Japanese Title: メタバースとバーチャルリアリティ： デジタルワールドを行き来する科学技術

Event Website: https://groups.oist.jp/tsvp/event/public-lecture-metaverse-and-virtual-reality-anatole-lecuyer-and-shunichi-kasahara

This event was supported by the department for science and technology of the French Embassy in Japan and OIST’s Theoretical Sciences Visiting Program (TSVP).

Title: Cybernetic Humanity - Exploring the Self Emerging From Human-Computer Integration

Abstract: Virtual reality (VR) spontaneously evokes a set of high-end technologies designed to "immerse" its users in synthetic 3D environments simulated in real time by a computer. Thanks to dedicated interfaces such as head-mounted displays, VR applications allow users to have powerful experiences such as being in a different place or interacting with characters that are not physically present for real. The first VR systems date back to the 1950s or 1960s, but a media and economic craze has recently developed, especially with the buzz around "Metaverses", these massively shared virtual worlds sometimes presented as the "Internet of the Future", in which we may one day be able to perform many human activities such as working, training, visiting, meeting, shopping, etc. Such an extraordinary promise has motivated colossal investments of the tech giants over the last 10 years. We are therefore living in a pivotal and historic moment for this field, which is progressively moving towards mass applications. In this seminar, we will question the next steps for VR technologies. We will question the present and the future of immersive technologies. We will draw up the state of the art of the field, and present the current and future research tracks, trying to answer the question: is the metaverse really the future of our interactions with digital contents?

Profile: Shunichi Kasahara is a researcher and project leader at Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc. He received his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Information Studies from the University of Tokyo in 2017 and joined Sony Corporation in 2008. He was an affiliate researcher at MIT Media Lab in 2012 before joining Sony CSL in 2014. He is currently leading research on “Cybernetic Humanity,” which explores the new humanity emerging from the integration of humans and computers. His research has been presented at ACM CHI, UIST, SIGGRAPH, SAP, and scientific journals, and he has also conducted interactive exhibitions and implemented social implementation. Starting in 2023, he is running the Cybernetic Humanity Studio as part of a collaboration between Sony CSL and OIST.

#OIST #OIST_TSVP #VirtualReality #VR #AR #Metaverse #Haptics #Embodiment #Cognition #Neuroscience #research #oist_tsvp #Theoretical #Science #VisitingProgram #Okinawa #TSVP