Of all the technologies Sterling mentions in the article, I think GPS is the most influential now and will be the most influential going forward, as it allows a close tethering between virtual, augmented and reality.

The way the article ended merged the sense of wonder these technologies bring, with a dramatic reminder that these technologies could be used in ways we might not like.

The article mentions that it would be wonderful if computers could help us understand things like non-uniform fields – at DoIT Academic Technology Media Learning Lab has created such a thing – a particle golf game which  helps students learn about thermodynamic states.

As for the separation of presence and immersion, I agree that it’s important to distinguish between the technical specifications with how humans actually perceive it – since, as the article mentions, there is many opportunities to take advantage of sensory metamers to improve the experience of virtual reality with the same computational power.

The accuracy of presence in non-real environment might not be good, but if we can’t tell, do we care?

I was curious about the nature of the debate regarding defining these terms before this article appeared, and if this 2003 article resolved it. In 1992 he wrote An experimental exploration of presence, followed by more than a 40 articles with about presence or immersion in their titles before he wrote ‘A note on presence technology’ – and while I can’t find citation numbers for that article, he has almost 12,00 citations in his career so I think it’s safe to say he was a well-regarded expert on Virtual Reality. I wasn’t otherwise able to answer my questions within the scope of this assignment. Mel Slater has written a blog about Presence at http://presence-thoughts.blogspot.com/ so he has clearly remained interested in the topic.