Forget the hydrofuels and the sweat shops and the consensual cuckolding for cable news assignments.
Sorry, what?
And focus on the envelope.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
(SCREAMING) What is reality?
[ROCK MUSIC]
You are listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is a sound check. How you feeling, Fred?
I'm feeling OK about it.
This is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show. I'm Charlie Bennett, in the studio with far too many chords, and Marlee Givens, Alex McGee, and Fred Rascoe. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you are here for, we hope you dig it.
Today's show is called Making Virtual Reality a Reality. Sounds kind of trippy, eh?
It sure does. But it is also the title of a book recently authored by Alison Valk, Ximin Mi, and Ashley Schick. Two of them are former guests on the show and also here with us today.
Alison works with us here at Tech, and Ximin used to work with us until very recently, when she left academia.
Now, I'm supposed to make a joke here. The script says that I should say, back to reality. But since she works in the banking system, that is absolutely not reality.
That's a good point.
Yeah. Well, we'll hear from them soon about their own realities.
There we go.
And they'll also be talking to us about how virtual reality technologies can be incorporated into library instruction.
And our songs today are all about bringing the virtual to life, integrating with technology, and the eternal question, what is reality?
How much psychedelic rock have you put into today's show?
We're never going to go back to a reality without digital technology. So we're going to have to dive in to what it means to further integrate VR technologies into our library experience. Let's embrace technology with music made by robots?
Sad robots.
Sad robots. CHARLIE BENNETT: So not psychedelic. This is "Technologic" by Daft Punk right here on Lost in the Stacks.
[DAFT PUNK, "TECHNOLOGIC"]
Buy it. Use it. Break it. Fix it. Trash it. Change it. Mail, upgrade it. Charge it. Point it. Zoom it. Press it. Snap it. Work it. Quick erase it. Write it. Cut it. Paste it. Save it. "Technologic" by Daft Punk, the sad robots. Sad robots?
French robots, sad robots.
French, sad robots. CHARLIE BENNETT: Shrugging robots. Our show today is called Making Virtual Reality a Reality, which is the name of a book co-written by Alice Valk, Ximin Mi, and Ashley Schick. We have two of those co-authors with us. And so I'll guess I'll just go ahead and ask you to introduce yourselves, Alison, and Ximin. Alison, you want to go ahead and introduce?
Sure. My name is Alison Valk, and I am currently the multimedia and emerging technologies librarian here at Tech. And it's really cool to be back in the studio again.
Glad you're here.
My name is Ximin Mi, and I used to be a librarian here at Georgia Tech working on data and visualization. But reality checked in, so I left last summer. But it's good to be back.
All right. So I want to start with your book. It starts out with the quote, "What is reality?" What is reality, or virtual reality, as far as how you present it in your book?
Well, I think we started it out just, what is reality? Is it what we experience every day? Is it a series of brain waves in our brain and how we translate that? I think we were just wanting people to reframe how they think of reality. And so we wanted to give a little bit of a historical reference, too, on virtual reality, like where it came from and its origins.
I made the joke about psychedelic earlier. But did you really find yourself going into a philosophy wormhole and picking at reality?
I think we wanted to a little bit, but we tried to refrain from going down that line of thought too much.
I think we were trying to be-- I would say re-experience reality. That's a lot of the focus of it. So wormhole, I don't know how many of us experience that. If we haven't, then it's probably not going to come up in this book as much. But I guess there is unlimited potential as to what the virtuality of reality can do and offer to us. We just touched on a little bit of the surface of it in this book. But there's a lot more we can explore in that world.
When it comes to defining virtual reality, how virtual does something have to be before you consider it a virtual reality? Is it kind of a fuzzy spectrum? Do you have a dividing line?
I want to tell the listeners right now that you two looked at each other like a full-on double take. And that was very interesting. Also, get the mics a little closer to your mouths. I'm sorry. You all have to hold mics. Because, once again, listeners we have a mixer in here and all these cords. And Fred's got a little more gray in his hair.
We're adapting, but it's sounding great, and it's going great. CHARLIE BENNETT: All right, cool.
What's your question, again? Sorry.
[LAUGHTER]
Yeah, definitely repeat that one.
Thanks, Charlie.
I want to give them time to think about it.
How virtual does something have to be for you to consider it virtual? It's reality and then into virtual reality. Is there a defining point where you cross over? It's a little fuzzy?
Again, I think it's less of how virtual it has to be. The question, instead, for us is how real it has to be to be virtual reality. Because, again, virtual is just a channel for people to experience reality without the limitation of time or space. That's the context of this book. So we are trying to make it as real as possible. The virtual part is the tooling. Because we use these tools to create this real experience as possible. That's why it's virtual.
But really, virtual is not that important.
I don't know how to unpack that. Are you saying that we can think of web pages as a virtual platform? We can think of stuff that's internet-based as virtual? But you're thinking about how real the experience has to feel for virtual to become virtual reality. That's the more important question?
Yes, yes. Again, virtual is a channel, and the reality is the goal. So yes.
That sounds like a T-shirt-- virtual is the channel. Reality is the goal.
That sounds like a band is what it sounds like. Why did you feel like you needed to write a book about this? What was the trigger that this was going to be a book-length exploration?
Well, I think we started it because it was, kind of, a unique concept in libraries. At the time, we were co-teaching a class with some undergraduate students who were doing research in that area. And we were presenting on it at ACRL. And the publisher approached us and said, hey, this is a unique topic. We don't hear about this type of technology or research going on in libraries very often.
We'd like you to, maybe, do a deep dive on how you structured the class, designed it, and that sort of thing. So we really started it as a toolkit, or a framework, for other people who might be interested in developing similar type initiatives.
Right. I want to add to that, first, as Alison mentioned, we worked on this for a long time. And we learned a lot. The second is we also had a lot of fun. And when we got deeper into this, we realized this offers an opportunity to learn and recreate content that no previous technology could offer at the same level.
So we were like, oh, maybe other librarian colleagues could use this as a roadmap to create similar programs for their students and for their organizations-- from the student, which kind of bumped our confidence a little bit. We were like, oh, students like this. They feel like they're learning, and they're having fun, so let's spread the word, and let's share our experience.
So right out, at least acknowledging Ashley Schick is a co-author, a book artist, a book binder. And let's definitely talk about their contributions in the next segment.
Absolutely.
This is Lost in the Stacks. We'll be back about virtual reality after a music set.
File this set under BD 331.C4925.
[FLYYING COLOURS, "NOT REAL"]
[STEALING SHEEP, "NOT REAL"]
(SINGING) So real, it's real.
It's real. Well, no, it's not real. That was "Not Real" by Stealing Sheep and, before that, "It's Real" by Flyying Colours.
Shouldn't that be pronounced "fly-ying"?
There are two Ys in that on purpose. I don't know. There's also a U in color-- ugh. Songs about wondering what is reality.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Lost in the Stacks, and today's show is called Making Virtual Reality a Reality, which is the title of a new book written by our guests, Alison Valk and Ximin Mi. And our unspoken third guest came up in the previous segment, Ashley Schick, who is a book artist and a teaching artist. So Alison, would you like to tell us about her contributions?
Yeah. Ashley has a long history of collaborating with the Georgia Tech Library. She's worked with us in some of our art programs. But she also worked as a schoolteacher over at The Lovett School for some time. And our book, obviously, we came at it from the perspective of academic librarians, Ximin and I. And we wanted to pull in the perspective of how to design educational programs for schoolchildren, as well. So Ashley came in.
And she had done work with school-aged children in maker spaces and things like that. And so she brought that perspective in designing educational initiatives for schoolkids in with these types of technologies.
The thing, also, about Ashley that I think is very cool is the book artist part. And so one of your co-authors is so tactile and so material in their work. Was there some tension there, working with a very material artist and talking about virtual reality? Was that a benefit? What was the writing relationship?
I want to say it's the opposite. She's such a great addition to the board of writing this book. Before I talk more about what she does, I want to make this statement. I think 18 is a very artificial dividing line between adults and minors. So is learning. It's a spectrum. As these technology are more prominent and mature and accessible, they come from a learning environment from Georgia Tech to more of the K to 12 classrooms.
That's where Ashley came in because a lot of her experience is working with K to 12 students. And in this book, she brought in that angle about what students in the K to 12 classrooms are interested in and what kind of activities are they designing, what kind of resources do they have, and what kind of struggles are they dealing with. And we noticed there might be differences, but we share a lot in common.
That's how we merged our voices into this one book and this one effort of sharing our teaching experience. CHARLIE BENNETT: Alison, that makes me think of your VIP class, your Vertically Integrated Project class here, which is building a virtual archive, and the tools that the students use. We got a demo of that just yesterday. And your student, who, I think, is a third year or fourth year--
Mm-hmm-- computer science.
--completely comfortable with the headset and the tools, hands on or hands off. And I look at a VR goggle headset, and I shiver. I don't want to have anything to do with it. And it does seem like some of that digital native thing is starting to come true. But it's not digital natives who are comfortable. It's more like younger people are comfortable with wearables and extended technology. Does that seem right to you? I didn't see you wear the goggles.
Yeah, the only reason I didn't, we ran out of time, or I would have. Because I've actually gotten more comfortable with it. And yeah, I agree. It's like the younger generation, I think they're popping that stuff on. They're really comfortable with it. So it doesn't seem as daunting as it might be for those of us who didn't grow up with that technology.
But something that I think is interesting-- you were talking about the tactile-- is that juxtaposition between material objects and these virtual objects. And that's something the VIP class is exploring is, for instance, they've been 3D scanning archival objects, which can really suffer from being handled all the time. And the virtual channel gives them-- gives students or whoever-- an opportunity to interact with these artifacts without damaging them.
So it's, in some senses, a preservation technique of sorts. And so we talked a little bit about that in the book. And that was some of what our class did, too.
Yes. I want to see, although the younger generation seem to be more comfortable with technology, in general, it doesn't mean they don't come to a learning experience like this without some kind of hesitation or fear. Actually, in part of one chapter, we address the technology phobia. So compared to us, the old timers, the college student might feel more comfortable, pick up the headset, and play a game. Doesn't mean they feel confident creating a game in it. That's a complete different thing.
So I think we share something in common here for things-- well, in the technology world. If we have had some experience, we feel more comfortable. But if we don't, we may feel some level of anxiety. And we actually had a process in our course development to talk with students, understand this phobia, and explain it to them, and tailor a learning plan that they feel comfortable to proceed with.
When you have students in classes and you're introducing them to virtual reality technologies-- saying, here's the headset, here's, maybe, the hand things, whatever-- in your experience, is it sometimes the first time that they've engaged with technology like that? Or have they used it in games or in other situations?
I think it's about half and half, wouldn't you say, Ximin? Because I feel like some of our students were familiar with it, but there was some that came in that had not.
Yeah, absolutely. How many years have we been working on this? I think we started in 2018. I would say the earlier years, some students came in without a lot of gaming experience. They were just excited about this new technology, and they wanted to learn more about it. I think, starting from 2021, more students came in with some previous experience using the device because the price drops. The options are more-- it's more accessible to people.
But I wouldn't say every student came in with a perfect, clear picture what they're dealing with.
I'll jump in about the accessibility thing. That's a big component of it. These technologies are not available to everybody. And then sometimes, it's a great cost, too. And so a lot of bringing this into libraries is making it accessible to everybody so that everybody can, at least, get a chance to try it, demystify it, that sort of thing. So that's a big part of this initiative, as well.
Well, you're listening to Lost in the Stacks. We're going to talk more about virtual reality instruction with Alison Valk and Ximin Mi on the left side of the hour.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hi, there. This is Mark Riedl of Georgia Tech's Computer Science Department, or is it? Maybe my voice has been deep faked, and this is just a digital forgery created by a neural network. Either way, you're definitely listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta.
Today's show is called Making Virtual Reality a Reality. And I was not present when that ID was recorded. So I don't know the truth of it.
I'll never tell. I was there, but I will not tell.
Yeah. Sounds like you. The promise of virtual reality is that it has the capability of taking us out of ourselves, down a rabbit hole, and into a digital wonderland. In fact, one of the pioneering visionaries of virtual reality, Ivan Sutherland, likened the potential of VR to Lewis Carroll's "Wonderlund"-- "Wonderland," I don't know why I said it like that-- in an essay called "The Ultimate Display."
Sutherland wrote, "A display connected to a digital computer gives us a chance to gain familiarity with concepts not realizable in the physical world. It is a looking glass into a mathematical wonderland. The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter." It gets kind of serious here, folks. That's why I'm stuttering. "A chair displayed in such a room would be good enough to sit in.
Handcuffs displayed in such a room would be confining. And a bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal. With appropriate programming, such a display could literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked." A harsh, harsh contrast between Alice and the bullet. That was written in 1965. Nearly 60 years later, the lines between virtual and reality are diminishing faster and faster and faster. File this set under T385.S83
[SOUL II SOUL, "BACK TO LIFE (HOWEVER DO YOU WANT ME)"]
(SINGING) Back to life. Back to reality. Back to life. Back to reality. Back to--
[GHOUL TALK, "MATERIALIZE"]
That was "Materialize" by Ghoul Talk and, before that, "Back to Life-- However Do You Want Me"--
[LAUGHTER]
By Soul II Soul-- that's Roman numeral II-- songs about bringing the virtual world into a reality with a little more oomph.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Lost in the Stacks. Today's show is called Making Virtual Reality a Reality. And we're talking about how virtual reality technologies can be used for instruction that happens in an academic library. Now, Alison, as we mentioned before, you've straight up got virtual reality tools that you're using as part of your class because it's about virtual reality, right?
Mm-hmm. CHARLIE BENNETT: Something that Fred said a while ago was, when are we going to get to the place where virtual reality is like the chalkboard? We don't go into classes and then do two weeks on how to use the chalkboard. What's the point of the chalkboard? It's just part of the tools that you use for teaching. Do you feel like we're there? Are you doing that in other instruction? If you ask the students, we're definitely already there.
As Jack, the student who presented with me yesterday, was saying, I do. I think the technology is here. I think all we have to do is implement it and make it available.
So you say you ask the students, and it is. We're not doing it, but they're ready for it?
Yes, absolutely, yeah.
OK. What would that look like?
When I think about the future of VR in education, I think of it-- my VIP for listeners for reference is about using these types of technologies for empathy and understanding. And I think one advantage that we can get from virtual reality is it helps you see another person's perspective or experience something that you might not necessarily be able to experience in your day-to-day life.
So for instance, some of these games and things in virtual reality are being used to educate people on the effects of global warming or seeing what a different culture is like. And I think that's the big advantage is, really, taking people out there out of their day-to-day bubble.
Yeah. Ximin?
I couldn't have said more. And also, I left this world, so what do I know about it? But I think, to sum it up, there are three categories-- accessibility, accessible to-- not only do we have access to other people's experience we wouldn't otherwise have but we also share out our experience other people wouldn't have had access to. The second one is shareability, which connects to this but also bring people into the same place in the virtual world that they wouldn't be able to.
And the last one is connectivity. We can do tasks together in this world, or experience or understand global warming or any other things that's only a theory, in reality. Or it's our own reality, but now it's shared reality. It's reality for you and may bring you here or in North Pole. We can share with the bears what we're experiencing. They're like, oh, got it. So that is the beauty of it.
I love that we went to the North Pole and polar bears.
Yeah, it's not cold enough.
If you tried to get one of those headsets on a polar bear, I don't think it would go very well.
Yeah, they're too warm, even in the headset.
[LAUGHS]
So I feel like we have so many paths that we can travel down from all of that that you just said. So I'm going to come back to, maybe, the practical aspects, something that was talked about recently in this presentation that I keep referring to. We saw a comparison between what a lot of people think of as virtual reality versus what's happening right now.
There was this Second Life looking kind of dynamic, or I won't use the company name, but there's a company pushing for the metaverse, and their stuff looks really bad.
You did say the company name.
I didn't, no. I would never.
Oh, OK.
[LAUGHTER]
But the virtual reality environment that I've seen most recently was incredibly detailed and very rich, almost had a storytelling aspect to it. And it seems like that happened while we weren't looking, a little bit. Is it going to keep improving, get to a more empathetic place, a more visceral place? What do you all think?
I think, from a technological angle, it's definitely improving. It enables you to do, or to recreate, pretty much any reality you want to. But are we going there? I think that's upon us. That's upon the educators and the content creators. Especially for a school like Georgia Tech, I think one way-- provide access to students with such technology and hold their hands to create content.
We also need to have the conversation as to what kind of content would really make a difference to create in this virtual environment. It's wonderful to create a "La La Land" or a LEGO world. You have so much fun.
But we also want to guide their mind to the places that are less fun, that's something that we want to think that's like climate change or a lot of social issues that we want people to see and hear and, now, experience in this virtual world, so getting a little serious here when it comes to content creation. But again, it's up to them to create whatever content that's relatable to them.
But I think us, as educators, should sprinkle that idea a little bit into their creation experience so that they start to think about such things.
Yeah, getting away from the Minority Report style, you can move images around in virtual reality but, instead, rendering experiences that are not available or are not sought by the students. I feel like we just went from data visualization to humanities real fast.
Well, I can pull it back out. So we're talking about content creation and how virtual reality and augmented reality can give users perspectives. Is there going to be a riot in the studio if I ask about injecting artificial intelligence into this?
Well, that's the end of the segment.
[LAUGHTER]
It goes without saying.
All right. So how are artificial intelligence technologies? Oh, yeah, and it looks like Charlie's reminded me we've only got 1 minute in this segment. So artificial intelligence and virtual reality-- 1 minute, go.
Go.
I think a lot of the AI platforms now enabled us to create image, even video or voice. So that definitely makes the content creation faster and better quality. But at the same time, there has been a lot of ethical discussions on the right use of AI. I hope, again, as educators, we would bring that into part of the content we create in the VR world and, also, a part of the classroom discussion. Alison?
Yeah, I would say with AI, I think it can be used-- say you're bringing in a speaker into a virtual environment. You could mimic their voice for some reason. You could duplicate their voice and bring that in. But, absolutely, the ethical issues are going to have to come into play there. And I think that's a larger discussion at some point. But I think where we're at now, we're at a very advanced stage. But I think the next stage is going to be bringing in the haptic aspect of it.
And I think we talked a little bit about that at the presentation yesterday, but how can you feel within the-- when you're in a virtual environment, you experience it, at this point, but what about feeling and touch and things like that?
Yeah, where the virtual reality pushes back a little bit.
Well, it sounds like that's going to be a topic of a future show. So y'all have to come back at some point in time.
Or, next time, is my AI version coming back?
Yes. Yeah, part two. Part two, a book--
This AI thing, man, I thought we were done. I thought we were done.
Well, tune in next time for the simulations of Alison Valk and Ximin Mi.
[LAUGHTER]
This is Lost in the Stacks, and our guests today were the real Alison Valk, multimedia and emerging technologies librarian at Georgia Tech library, and Ximin Mi, the real one, currently a data and analytics librarian at the Federal Reserve in Atlanta but formerly, a dear colleague, data visualization librarian at Georgia Tech. Thanks to you both for coming on the show today.
Thanks for having us.
Yeah, thanks for having us.
File this set under Z678.93.S53.
[ANDY WARHOL BANANA TECHNICOLOR, "I'M IN LOVE WITH MY COMPUTER"]
[TUBEWAY ARMY, "YOU ARE IN MY VISION"]
That was "You Are in My Vision" by Tubeway Army and, before that, "I'm in Love with My Computer," by Andy Warhol Banana Technicolor, songs about integrating with technology.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Today's show is called Making Virtual Reality a Reality. So for the mid-show break, read from the 1965 essay, "The Ultimate Display," which imagined being able to make Alice in Wonderland a reality that we could viscerally experience. So lightning round, as we go into the credits, if you could virtually enter the world of any book, what would it be? Marlee?
My favorite book of 2023, which was Walking with Sam by Andrew McCarthy, walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain.
Nice.
Fred.
I think I would pick the works of William Shakespeare, to just remove any of the drama. Like, here's the handkerchief. Iago put it there. Don't worry about it, Othello.
[LAUGHTER]
Like, here's the message. I got the message to you, Romeo. Don't worry about it. Juliet's fine, and just everybody's OK.
Just wait after you wake up.
[LAUGHS] All right, Alex?
I would probably say one of my favorite books from 2023, Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. There's actually a virtual reality component in it where they put on VR headsets and the Argos, which is the ship in the future, which is the last hope for humanity. And they enter the library, and they can do this thing called the Atlas, where it's like they walk around, and they can see everywhere in the world. But-- no spoilers-- it's not what it seems.
Mm. Alison, do you have an answer for this?
I think any type of time-traveling book. I sort of fancy myself being able to jet from time period to time period, so that would probably--
You want the buffet platter for your virtual reality.
Yes, exactly.
Ximin?
You just spoiled my book, Alice in Wonderland. So it's not only time travel, maybe, it's also space travel. Maybe it's also reality travel. Because it's such experiences that's so unreal that is becoming a real experience, so back to our opening question and our opening sentence in the book, but what is reality? CHARLIE BENNETT: [LAUGHS] I would like to go into American Canopy because I would like to experience the American forest before all that stuff happened to it. Roll the credits.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MARLEE GIVENS: Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Alex McGee Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens.
Legal counsel and--
It's a copy of Alice in Wonderland, right?
It's got to be a copy of Alice in Wonderland. Philip Burrus gave us a copy of Alice in Wonderland. Provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
Special thanks to Alison and Ximin for being on the show. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.
Our web page is library.gatech.e du/lostinthestacks, where you'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you want to get in touch with us and tell us what reality is.
Our episode next week takes a look at who makes our library furniture.
From virtual reality to furniture, Marlee?
Yep.
Oh, to stark reality. Time for our last song today. And as we close with a song, it's got a-- let me-- I need to get my simulation in here because the real one's not working.
Just hit reset on you.
[CLEAR THROAT] And we close with a song that's about embracing technology and also, according to Alex--
It's a jam.
It is a jam. Let's get ready for a virtually augmented weekend with "Computer Love" by Zapp. That is an '80s jam. Have a great weekend, everybody.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[ZAPP, "COMPUTER LOVE"]
(SINGING) Computerized. Digital love. Computerized. Ah, baby.