Presence - A Paradigm Shift
Presence. It may just be our eyes that are being transported to new worlds with the Oculus Rift, but it seems to do the trick. The "trick" being immersing ourselves in virtual experiences. And still we seek to transport our entire bodies with motion tracking technology, whether to feel the environments with well-positioned fans, or even haptic feedback to make the worlds tangible. So eager we are to leave the real world, but aren't we forgetting something? Yes, there are magical worlds to visit and awe-inspiring things to see. New perspectives previously only reserved for the few. Like seeing earth from the surface of the moon for the first time, where no lines are drawn on the globe like the ones in our classrooms, maps and on the news, in reality a tiny, "pale blue dot"(Carl Sagan) hanging in the void. Cognitive shifts in awareness that makes people reconstruct their entire way of thinking like real life astronauts have reported to experience, sometimes even l