How Technologies... Are Already Changing Lives

Abstract

Science journalist Eva Wolfangel has specialized in investigating the effects of future technologies on society - by accompanying people who already make intensive use of these technologies today. She spent weeks under a VR headset researching social virtual reality, and she finally visited her new "virtual" friends in their real lives in Kuwait, Israel and various US states. These people already spend a large part of their lives in virtual reality - and that is no reason for cultural pessimism. In Japan, Wolfangel has accompanied researchers working on human augmentation, and she has tried out many of these technologies, met people here who are already using them and talked to many about their dream of an augmented future. In this talk, Eva Wolfangel discusses her research and how future technologies are already changing society today.