A few things that caught my eye, and interest, over the last thirty days.
The Return of Virtual Reality
VR is back with a serious bang, and in the last week Mark Zuckerberg justified Facebook’s $2b aquisition of trailblazer start-up Oculus Rift by claiming he believed the virtual reality headset would eventually shift 100m units. I was lucky enough to spend five of the most nerve-shredding moments of my gaming life with the tech at EGX (playing a very immersive version of the sci-fi horror game Alien: Isolation) and I am very excited about the potential of this for consumers. This isn’t the only VR game in town, with Sony working on a headset for the PS4 by the name of Project Morhpeus, and Oculus themselves working with Samsung to produce a headset incorporating a mobile phone.
None of which will be anywhere near as cheap as Google’s Cardboard; a project designed to bring VR into even the most frugal of homes. All you need is an Android smartphone and a DIY headset made from, you guessed it, cardboard (I got mine from Amazon for less than £20) and you can have your own lo-fi VR experience in your home. There aren’t too many apps available yet, but the price feels worth it purely for the cinema-like YouTube app.
It’s Complicated by danah boyd
This fascinating book has made more of an impact on how I talk to young people about being safer online, and particularly how I empower parents and school staff to discuss these issues with children, than anything else I’ve read in the last year. danah boyd (the lack of capitalisation in her name is her choice) is an academic with a brilliant insight in the connected lives of teenagers, and her writing makes some really complex ideas seem simple. Although most of the references are US-based, and the websites discussed now seem quite out of date (particularly the number of mentions of MySpace), the overall thrust of why teenagers seemingly spend so much time on social media is as relevant as ever. The book is available as a PDF for no charge here, but it is also available on Kindle and from all good bookshops.
Teh Internet is Serious Business
Again, not a typo, but rather the appropriation of an Internet meme that encapsulates this brave and thoroughly engaging production at the Royal Court Theatre. It’s been an interesting year for the Internet in the theatre world, first with James Graham’s Privacy, which dealt with the subject of Edward Snowden and online surveillance from governments and tech companies, and now Tim Price’s take on the rise of Anonymous, 4Chan, and the convicted members of LulzSec. Part irreverent history of Internet memes (including the origin of Rick Rolling), part serious drama investigating the manipulation of two British teenagers that led to their high profile arrests; this was a play that wasn’t here to judge online culture, but to try and explain it. Trolls and all.
James Diamond Training 