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Earlier this month, the New York Times published its first feature story with augmented reality, or AR, depicting 360 degree models of Olympians suspended in motion: a figure skater frozen in the midst of his quadruple jump, a speed skater paused in the course of the sharp angling of a turn. Unlike virtual reality, there’s no headset involved to view the story; you only fan the flames of the Times smartphone app and the skaters appear as in the event that they’re within the room, allowing you to view them from the perimeters, above, and below. It’s sort of like Pokemon Go—but for news.
And while it’s a fairly revolutionary use of AR technology, some are questioning whether the result was definitely worth the energy and resources of a serious news publication. To quote the wisdom of an Internet commenter: “I’m sure that [AR] has a number of worthwhile potential uses, but I’m undecided that seeing a figure skater taking on a stance on my front room carpet is certainly one of them.”
So is AR the long run of journalism—or dead on arrival?
That could all depend, say UC Berkeley experts, on whether the journalism industry as a complete is open to each latest technology and latest ideas about sharing information and news.
“News organizations would have to search out a strategy to make the AR experience ridiculously useful, identical to the newspaper was actually ridiculously useful before the Internet.”
“This has been my biggest frustration with the [news industry] basically—is that it sees its mission as purely and solely journalistic storytelling,” says Richard Koci-Hernandez, journalism and multimedia professor on the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He suggests that news media should start seeing themselves less as pure storytelling publications and more as communications corporations that create applications with utility. Because usefulness is a big think about determining whether or not a brand new application succeeds.
Consider the highest 20 apps of 2017. They all had some form of utilitarian value: Instagram, Facebook, (and maybe surprisingly) Bitmoji were useful for communicating with friends; Amazon for shopping; Lyft, Uber, Google Maps and Waze for transportation; Spotify and SoundCloud for listening to music, etc. You’ll notice no news publications managed to make the cut.
Koci-Hernandez says that for AR to have a spot in journalism, “[news organizations] would have to search out a strategy to make the AR experience ridiculously useful, identical to the newspaper was actually ridiculously useful before the Internet. It was the one place to get movies times, get your coupons, to read news and other forms of things. There was a utility to [newspapers].”
Spit-balling, he imagined how someone might hold the phone as much as a restaurant and see a review display on their screen, or hold it as much as a theater and see the movie times scroll past, or see crime statistics on a selected corner on the town.
“We should start enthusiastic about how we are able to make it easier for readers and viewers to do XYZ,” he says. “Because that’s when technology really catches on.”
For its part, the New York Times says its Olympics story wasn’t nearly trying out a cool latest fad, or sharing a single piece of journalism. “It was also about exploring what visual journalism may seem like within the near future,” wrote Graham Roberts, director of immersive platforms storytelling and a co-director of the virtual reality program for NYTVR, its virtual reality branch. “We are extending stories beyond the inches of a screen—and in so doing, envisioning a world during which devices begin to vanish and the spaces around us grow to be the data surfaces themselves.”
Luddites shouldn’t worry, though. It’s impossible that anything will ever usurp classic print reporting, says former newspaper editor, Silicon Valley CEO, and Berkeley lecturer Alan Mutter.
“The way I see it, AR is like chicken soup when you have got a chilly. It couldn’t hurt,” Mutter says. “But I don’t think it’s as transformative because the written word…. It’s not a game changer. It’s a game tweaker.”
So what are the advantages of adding AR to a journalist’s tool box, exactly? Well, on the plus side, it will probably add spatial elements to stories which will difficult to convey in words.
“Visual media helps people to get a greater spatial understanding of how the event unfolded, just like the Las Vegas [mass shooting]. How high up was this person? Why was this shooting so effective? How did it work? How did a [bump stock gun accessory] enhance the gun’s ability to fireside rapidly?” says Jeremy Rue, assistant dean for academics, and latest media lecturer at Berkeley’s J-School. He thinks AR might be a tool for communicating that sort of knowledge.
Additionally, AR could help readers develop a more profound understanding of, and empathy for, the topics covered in stories.
The obvious problem with an industry in financial jeopardy is that it has so few resources, so it’s an especially big gamble.
“I believe each embodiment and empathy are amplified by technology like augmented and virtual reality. They give us a brand new strategy to perceive stories and a brand new method to inform them,” says Nani Walker, an AR/VR expert who’s currently developing augmented reality and virtual reality prototypes with the J-School and Center for Augmented Cognition. “The ability to truly deepen reader perspectives is absolutely essential.”
For now though, AR remains to be pretty buggy. Koci-Hernandez and Rue struggled with it a bit, I couldn’t get the app to work in any respect, and Walker spent about three minutes holding her phone above and below her head during our interview before the skater finally appeared on her screen and, seemingly, within the room.
“This technology could be very early in its development, so it’s really glitchy. People are going to get frustrated with something like that,” Walker says. And AR definitely has its viewing drawbacks—like having to carry a phone out in front of you and walk around a room in search of a flat surface for an Olympian or Pokemon to perch on. “But once the technology develops and also you’re capable of have an Olympic athlete in your room swimming, well,” she says, “That might be really exciting.”
Of course, the apparent problem with an industry in financial jeopardy is that it has so few resources, says Rue, so it’s an especially big gamble to leap on the subsequent tech fad when it could easily short circuit.
“The challenge is we don’t really know for certain which technologies will succeed to grow to be mainstays of society, and which can falter,” Rue wrote in an email. “The aspects that determine it are complex, and include greater than just the capabilities of the technology. Sometimes it depends upon popularity and social adoption, like we saw with Pokemon Go. It’s like predicting which song can be at the highest of the Billboard charts.”
Koci-Hernandez predicts that AR in journalism will suffer from an overall lack of in-house tech expertise and resources, that are crucial for a platform to actually evolve. Regardless, if recent developments within the industry have shown anything, news media can’t afford to simply ignore the subsequent big thing.
“There’s a fear of missing out [on new tech], and news organizations are attuned to that, because we actually did miss the boat the primary time,” Koci-Hernandez says. “When the Internet was first born, nobody really paid attention to it in any serious way and we put our information on the market free of charge.”
“We must be experimenting,” he says, even when some experiments go flawed. “Mentos and Coke will not be the very best thing to place together, but you have got to do it to learn, and you have got to get dirty, fall, and fail—so you may move on.”
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