The Virtual Beings Summit is offering $1000- 25,000 in grants for people creating applications that use digital humans, virtual influencers, avatars, and related technology. Based on the application form, the use case the judges are particularly interested in is for longevity, i.e. applications to help the retirement age/senior citizen community, since this is a topline question:
What project do you want to work in the longevity space, but currently cannot? Why is it particularly interesting to the field of longevity, and to you personally?
One obvious project that qualifies here is the use of avatars to help treat Parkinson's symptoms, as pioneered by the late, beloved Fran Serenade.
Submission deadline is September 17 -- all the submission details here.
Hat tip: Ryan Schultz, who has thoughts.
It has always struck me that places such as SL are great places for older people to live their lives when RL has become limited. But Getting old myself, I now think this is what young people think old people should be doing. As you get older, the computer becomes much more of a nightmare. Your eyesight fails, you get tired quicker, you feel ill all the time, sitting in some chair staring at a screen seems less inviting. And the killer is, you know that what you really want is the RL you used to have, when you were younger. F..ck Virtual life, what you want is reality in the last few years you have left. I remember my father in the few years he had before he died would go sit in the sun as much as he could. If I had showed him a virtual world, even one that looked better than the real, he would have looked at me and smiled, like the elderly often do to the young. One day you will understand.
Posted by: JohnC | Friday, August 02, 2019 at 01:30 PM