The Future of News? Virtual Reality | Nonny de la Peña | TED Talks




What if you could experience a story with your entire body, not just with your mind? Nonny de la Peña is working on a new form of journalism that combines …

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24 Comments

  1. VR as a technology is truly innovative. However this intersection of VR and Journalism as it is envisaged in this talk this is seriously unsettling, infused with the the notion that somehow journalistic accuracy and depth can be attained by extending VR into the practice of journalism. This is why it is potentially extremely dangerous as vehicle than can, and I suspect will, be used as a blatant technology for spreading misleading and outright false news.

    I am absolutely in favor of digital technology changing and morphing our professional domains and fields of practice. However this example a clear and blatant attempt at producing a machine of outright manipulation and lies and feeding them to the public in a compelling audio-visual format.

    How will it be possible to discern the real from the virtual once this technology is perfected?

  2. PLEASE READ THIS AND UP-VOTE IF YOU CARE ABOUT EFFECTIVE PUBLIC CONVERSATION: No one seems to think about this or care (especially Youtube), but the fact that Youtube sets the comment-sort setting default to "Top Comments" instead of "Newest First" (a setting that probably 95% of people don't even notice) essentially KILLS real conversation. It reduces the possibility of real conversation to hundreds of people barraging the select few (who got lucky enough to comment and get an up-vote or 2 early after the video's posting) with comments and disproportionately large amounts of more up-votes, simply because they were there early on. Everyone else, regardless of how valid or insightful their comment is, gets buried in a sea of comments never to be seen, simply because most people aren't aware of, or don't understand the true utility of, switching the comment-sort to "Newest First." Don't believe me? Switch to "Newest First" and you'll see that hardly any comments have even a single like (because no one saw them). I don't know why I'm still going on, because probably no one will ever see this. Please message Youtube if you see this and care.

  3. This is kind of already dated. I tried some VR back in April that was captured using real 360• cameras and 3D mics- one was downhill skiing and the other was white water rafting. Eventually scene reconstruction won't be necessary.

  4. As a journalist I find this disturbing. The only way to 'accurately' represent a scenario is to record events as they happen, and then play them back. Any element of 'reconstruction' by someone, journalist or no, involves an element of narration and projection that is extremely subjective. — In other words, this isn't journalism, it's art.

  5. Great now we can truly be there for those throwing babies out of incubators, gulf of tonkin and SAA using sarin gas incidents!

  6. To those who express concern over media bias, propaganda and deceit: I hear you on that. That will remain a problem with something like this to the same extent that it is today, perhaps even with deeper consequences. However, I feel it is important to recognise that this is not a problem with media or journalism itself. It is a problem with the existing market conditions in which the media and journalism currently operates. Privatised and politically charged from the top down. It's systemic, not individually applicable to each journalist. The only way to fix that is to separate journalism from the profit motive. To separate news reporting from the interests of those the news relate. Put plainly, to disallow companies like News Corporation from even existing to begin with. They are an unnecessary relic of a pre-internet age, and do not belong.

  7. This is really good and will have a big impact in the world. Its best to work with gaming companies who already have the technology to improve the graphics to make it even more realistic.

  8. Low blood sugar doesn't cause seizures and I've never seen a seizure that looked like that. They are just making things up to illicit the response they want.

  9. If this is combined with recent camera technology such as the globe-looking 360*2 thingy seen in recent articles (google it if you care), millions of people could attend newsworthy scenarios as they happen, in the virtual realm. Imagine what emphatic emotions such news castings would communicate. I sure hope this gets used to erradicate corruption, by eliminating middle hands in the whisper-game state of current journalism.

  10. this was truly amazing, to see how technology can be used in every aspect of our lives. As long as it used correctly and not as a tool of propaganda

  11. I'm not entirely sure making the news literally sensational is the best thing to do. And how would VR be applied in other news stories besides dire emergencies? What would VR add to a new piece of legislation being passed or a new scientific/medical breakthrough?

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