Virtual Reality, Cognitive Computing and Watson + Bluehack / Virtualhack Warmup

UNITY + IBM + FLAGCX + SNOWCRASH + LOBO

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Unity have been pushing hard to democratize access to development, leading globally when it comes to immersive tech development tools for many areas (even beyond games): From education to medical visualization, to psychology and engineering, mixing a huge array of accessible tools, APIs, SDKs and sensors integration. Today, their platform represents the first contact of a new generation to coding, and also a powerful toolset for experienced developers. The story is simple: From teenagers that want to build a game, and after a while end up building things like scientific storytelling experiences, MRI and CT-Scan Visualising platforms, engineering tools and so on.

On the other hand, our friends from IBM have been leading innovative research with Watson, for instance for Oncology and Genomics, both in the clinical practice -augmenting doctors to make better decisions for their patients- and also discovery platforms with the goal of generating insight and helping bioengineers develop new targeted therapies against chronic diseases like cancer.

IBM made a huge effort and today, Watson lives in the cloud and it’s API can be accessed by anyone to power applications that range from medicine, to economics, urban planning, smart cities, scientific research -just to mention a few.

Mixing Watson’s virtual presence with Unity and immersive technologies for the first time, we open the gates and invite a new generation of developers to create awesome stuff, in diverse areas, and we can’t wait to see what will come from that mix.

To celebrate those possibilities, we’re hosting a special event at IBM headquarters with the presence of:

Thiago Rotta - IBM Watson Solutions Brand Leader

Jay Santos - Unity Technologies Evangelist and Field Engineer

Boo Aguilar - SNOWCRASH, Project Leader of ‘A Cognitive VR Experience’

We’ll share more about VR and immersive technologies, Cognitive Computing, AI and its possibilities, how they can blend together and what to expect in the near future on both ends.

We also want to invite devs to get immersed in this universe, and do a warm up for a Hackathon that is going to take place soon, also at IBM headquarters.

Applications are free of charge, but with limited seats, so hurry up!

From FLAGCX:

Adjacent possible, as described by Steven Johnson, "Is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself."

Beauty is a restless entity: the world is changing ever faster - and that’s the sweet spot to us.

From GPS and AR, to VR and AI, at FLAGCX we've built early projects and cases that had the responsibility to showcase the potential of emerging technologies and new mediums - because being early content producers for emerging mediums we have the opportunity and the responsibility to do so, to contribute to the evolution and the future of Human-Computer Interaction.

In that spirit, over a year ago Roberto Martini (FLAGCX CEO) and Boo Aguilar (Head of Next Gen Experiences) kickstarted SNOWCRASH, a new unit focused entirely in immersive and cognitive technologies research and the future of Human Computer Interaction. The unit, still secretive until now, have partnered with leading animation studio LOBO.CX ( http://lobo.cx/ ), and together, we’ve been experimenting with the future of Human Computer Interaction in partnership with some of the best talents and partners in the world, translating to present adjacent possibles and materializing the future of HCI, in an open innovation protocol. SNOWCRASH was born to experiment with next generation experiences mixing science, tech, arts and passion.

That was the case in november, 2016, when the Snowcrash team was invited to host an installation at the iconic MIT Media Lab with our friends from MIT @Hacking Arts. We made ‘A Cognitive VR Experience’, the first VR experience in the world to use cognitive computing and IBM Watson - connected to databases like Wikipedia for unlimited interactions. That project was made in collaboration with our friends from IBM and Unity Technologies and you can check more details about in this post: https://www.facebook.com/flagcx/photos/a.335923743114256.79858.164674870239145/1283126031727351/?type=3&theater ( https://www.facebook.com/flagcx/photos/a.335923743114256.79858.164674870239145/1283126031727351/?type=3&theater )

We believe Immersive technologies, much like linguistics, are also cognitive technologies, and are rocket ships for the mind (as Magic Leap stated, playing with the famous Steve Jobs quote ‘Computers are like bicycles for the mind’). We exist to augment humans and help our kind to transcend. That’s our mission.

Part of the reason why we chose to build ‘A Cognitive VR Experience’ is because we believe immersive technologies represents the next generation of computing visualization, while Cognitive computing and AI represent a new paradigm of computing per se.

https://youtu.be/LA_UkmYgYEk