Metaverse will Fail

Trying HoloLens
at LinkedIn Sydney

I am not a believer in the Metaverse, and doubt I ever will be. The same claims were made for previous generations of VR, and Iwas proven right to doubt them. Metaverse is too much like Second Life, Google Glass, and real life, so will fail.

The hype over Metaverse sounds all too familiar, and the reality far short of what is claimed for the technology. It is not that I am particularly skeptical of this form of VR, but when there have been so many waves of hype, making the same claims, and producing the same disappointment, it is hard not to have skepticism as your default position.

I recall eight years ago when we were all going to be wearing Google Glass. I sat in one presentation where I was the only one not wearing some sort of gadget. Google Glass went the way of the Apple Newton: the subject of ridicule.

There is a role for VT (or more likely AR) in education, and particuarly training. This especially applies to hands-on training. It also has potential in language learning. However, VR may not be needed for this. Dr Jinghong Zhang pointed to grass roots use of TikTok for language learning in her seminar at ANU yesterday.

Building an online campus has advantages. But that has been done for decades, very successfully, without VR. Attempts to add VR have failed, not due to a lack of the technology, but because it was missing the point. Virtual campuses work not by emulating physical ones, but by getting rid of the physical limitations.

For the last ten years people have been showing me demonstrations of how Second Life, Mozilla Hubs and other assorted VR could emulate a university campus. Apart from being clunky implementations these all seemed to be missing the point. Virtual universities work by not emulating the features of a real campus. The silliest implementation I saw was of a library in a virtual university, complete with a virtual card catalog (real libraries no longer have card catalogs). A virtual lecture theatre showing rows of avatars perhaps makes an out of date lecturer feel good, but is emulating a poor learning experience.

This is not to say some form of VR/AR will not work, just as the Apple iPhone succeeded where the Newton failed. But it will take some inspired design to make the Meta-verse more than just another clunky old VR application. As an example, I found Microsoft HoloLens much better than Google Glass, despite having a much bulkier headset.

Implications of Body Worn Computers

In 2012 I was interviewed by Alexander Hayes for his PhD thesis on wearable computing. This has been published as  "The Socioethical Implications of Body Worn Computers: An Ethnographic Study" (University of Woolongong, 2020). He discusses concerns over the use of Google Glass (including y own), how the use of the technology may be normalized, the use of the body as an interface, the role of context.  My post on wearing Google Glass ("First Impressions of Wearing Google Glass",March 26, 2014") is cited in the thesis, which makes me wonder if I should list that as a formal academic publication.

Reference

Hayes, Alexander, The Socioethical Implications of Body Worn Computers: An Ethnographic Study, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of Computing and Information Technology, University of Wollongong, 2020. https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses1/853

Education Technology Future Not as Predicted

The  2014 NMC Technology Outlook for Australian Tertiary Education: A Horizon Project Regional Report sponsored by Open Universities Australia. The report contains a list of twelve technologies the authors say will be important to Australian tertiary education over the next five years. I agree some will be important, but most are not technologies, they are business strategies. Most are not new, but have been around for years, or decades.

What I suggest could change higher education in Australia is:

1. Require formal teaching qualifications of academic staff: While the vocational education sector requires teaching staff to be trained in teaching, universities do not. The result is portly designed (or not designed at all) courses. Assuming the government's deregulation of fees occurs, this could see most Australian universities put out of business due to their inefficient teaching practices.
2. Design programs primarily for part time online students: While the vocational sector assumes their students are part time and can only rarely visit a campus, most university academics have the idea that the typical student is full time on campus. The result is that university courses do not suit the typical student who has work or home responsibilities which they need to fit their studies into. Those universities which change their programs to allow for part time online students, while retaining a quality u8nveirsity experience, can expect to do well in the deregulated environment. A few elite institutions may be able to find sufficient full time independently wealthy students to fill their campuses, but most universities will need to change to meet their student's needs, or go out of business.

The 12 technologies:

12. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

BYOD is not a technology, it is a business strategy. It is going to be very expensive, and embarrassing, for institutions which do not have good security and procedures in place.

11. Flipped Classroom

Also not a technology, or new. I would call it just ordinary good teaching practice. This contrasts with the practice of boring students rigid with "lectures", which is just a waste of time.

10. Mobile Learning

Okay, this is technology, but also not new. I suggest we should not assume that our students are connected to the Internet all the time, or that is a good way for them to learn. Instead we should make our online learning platforms mobile compatible, which is easy while we are making them accessible to the disabled. We should also make the learning materials available offline, either through the features built into HTML5, or less technical means, such as "books".

9. Online Learning

Online learning is a technology, which has been around for a decade or so (I have been teaching online at university for four years). Hopefully the MOOC nonsense will go away by the end of the year and we can concentrate on designing real online courses.

8. Badges/microcredits

Badges are fine for vocational education, but do we want it in university?

9. Games and gamification

Also not new, and better called simulation based learning.

6. Learning Analytics

Analytics is something universities need to make an investment in. As an example, I suspect it is very easy to detect "at risk" students by mining the learning management system database. Of course we would then need processes to support those students.

5. Open Content

This is a business strategy and one which conflicts with the current approach of most universities.

4. The Internet of Things

The Internet of things is highly overrated and not very relevant to universities.

3. Machine learning

I suspect that much of the routine tutoring of students could be automated with AI.

2. Natural user interfaces

An interesting area the ANU's Human Computer Interface group come up with some weird and wonderful devices, but also not very gallivant to education.

1. Wearable Technology

Google Glass is not new technology, does not work particularity well and is only relevant to a few aspects of education where you need to be hands free. More than ten years ago they tried to sell us head up displays at the Department of Defence, for mechanics fixing jet engines. That company was bought by Google and it became Google Glass.

Master-class in Technology Issues from Canberra's Schoolchildren

Greetings from the University of Canberra Inspire Centre where the first "Canberra Glass Meetup" is being held. I was very disappointed with the start of the event on the prototype "Google Glass" head mounted display, with not so good presentations from the USA. I then saw a Tweet from Marina Lobastov about eloquent school-kids in the parallel session in  the next room. I moved rooms and found one of the students explaining at length, what were the issues with Google Glass. This was better than any of the advertised presenters. We then heard from a local teacher. It is unfortunate the event was not built around this group in a Q&A session, then broadcast to the world. It seemed very odd to me to be invited to hear from international speakers on a topic who appeared to have less of a grasp of the issues than some kids from the local school (admittedly these are exceptional students with an exceptional school with exceptional students).

Google Glass Half Full

Greetings from the University of Canberra Inspire Centre where the first "Canberra Glass Meetup" is being held. I was very disappointed with the first session of international speakers on the prototype "Google Glass" head mounted display. This second session started better, with Professor Mark Billinghurst, from University of Canterbury, NZ. It may be that I was just more comfortable with a familiar accent than a US one, but it seemed to me that Professor Billinghurst was providing credible, useful information on the use of wearable devices, than just hype. I am not particularly interested that someone in the USA is enthusiastic about using Google Glass. I want to know what they are using it for and how this compares with the alternatives.

What I have found most frustrating about this evening is that while watching low quality videos of people across the world enthusing about Google Glass, we have people here in Canberra, in this building who are expert in computer technology and have experience of using this technology: why are we not hearing from them.

If we are going to have beamed in presentations they have to have better production values.  An approach I have seen work well in the past is to have a pre-prepared video, followed by a live question and answer session. The advantage of this approach is the pre-recorded video can be carefully prepared and sent in advance, so it will not have transmission problems. The following live Q&A does not have to be so high quality and could even be a phone hook-up.

Wearable Technology at University of Canberra

Greetings from the University of Canberra Inspire Centre where the first "Canberra Glass Meetup" is being held. There is a series of international speakers on the use of the prototype "Google Glass" head mounted display.

Speakers include Professor Mark Billinghurst, University of Canterbury, NZ and Rob Manson, CEO, buildAR.com.

My First Impressions of Wearing Google Glass at a demonstration in Canberra in March were not good. I found the physical design of the unit bulky. While it worked well I could not see it having much use in education, apart for vocational education where the student is carrying out a physical task needing both hands.

This event did not start well for me, with my being asked to sign a complex paper form to agree to be videoed.  This asked if I agreed to have my "testimonial" used for promoting the University of Canberra. I ticked "no", but then in the introduction of the event was told that I had agreed to being recorded continuously for the whole event, by those wearing Google Glass, apart from in the bathroom. Clearly I did not agree to this. One reason for holding such events, with enthusiasts, is to work out the bugs, not just in the hardware and software, but in the legal and social issues as well, such as what expectation of privacy I have. These are difficult issues with no clear answers.

The first speaker for the event was Cecilia Abadie. Unfortunately this was via a low quality video link from somewhere. The sound was excellent, but I wondered why I had to drive across the city on a cold night to what someone on a computer screen, when I could have done this at home.

Cecilia related the experience of using the Google Glass device for an extended period.  She touched on the problem of friends worrying if they were being recorded. She also related how she was issued with a traffic violation for wearing Google Glass while driving. She argued the device was turned off. It could be argued that the device is less distracting than a conventional display in the car dashboard.

Brandon King then talked (also on video conference apparently from somewhere in the USA). The quality of the video was better this time, but I did wonder how much Brandon or Cecilia added to the evening, as they did not say much about what they did with the head-up display. I started to wonder why I was stilling here listening to what is essentially an extended advertisement for a Google product. I don't mind attending product demonstrations (I attended one last week), but prefer one with a trained salesperson and for it to be clear they are selling on behalf of a particular company.

Libby Chang explained Google Glass allowed her to "be in the moment", as if hiking she saw a flower, she did not have to fumble around to find her camera. I found this an odd observation. If hiking and I saw a flower and wanted to " be in the moment" I would stop and look at the flower: reaching for a device would ruin the moment. When using a device, such as the keyboard I am typing on, I find this does separate me from the world around me.

Libby argued that wearables can be personalised. She almost  was apologising for that she did not wear them all the time and argued they could be taken off. However, I have already tonight experienced forced use of Glass as a member of the audience. It is not a great leap of imagination to a situation where employees or students would be required to use a wearable device, as a condition of their employment or studies.

When then had "David Lee" (who I could not find on the program), talk about how to personalise Google Glass custom finishes. He gave the example of asking Goolge Glass how much air to put in a tire, while filling the tire. This could be an extremely dangerous exercise. A car tire could cause serious injury if under or overinflated. This could easily happen by misinterpreting the information provided, for example the unit of measure used for pressure. At the end David asked if Glass was a fashion problem: I think it is and a much smaller device is needed.

So far this Glass event is very much a glass half full experience for me. ;-)

Google Glass Demonstration at University of Canberra

The University of Canberra Inspire Centre is hosting a "Canberra Glass Meetup", with a series of international speakers on the use of the prototype "Google Glass" head mounted display.
Speakers include Professor Mark Billinghurst, University of Canterbury, NZ and Rob Manson, CEO, buildAR.com. The event is free and is 5:30pm, 12th May 2014 (there were 12 tickets left when I checked).


My First Impressions of Wearing Google Glass at a demonstration in Canberra in March were not good. I found the physical design of the unit bulky. While it worked well I could not see it having much use in education, apart for vocational education where the student is carrying out a physical task needing both hands.