Tonight, Shelly Farnham presented a more national perspective Viewing a scene in the air (a camera attached to a hot air balloon) with VR goggles. Then she talked about Oracles.

The Barnum Effect

The idea that people will project self desired information into anything (which is why horoscopes work so well). This worked also for the Oracle of Delphi.

So, she aggregated together a huge database of answers and matched them up to questions. It was an oracle website where people could type in a question and get an answer. In reality, the responses were randomly generated from the database.

But it was not immersive enough, she thought.

So she made a huge dome with a bunch of lights and a massive antenna sticking up into the sky. Visitors sat in the middle of a lighted collum and asked their questions. The answers would be projected onto the wall.

That’s pretty immersive.

“If you get people collaborating, you can create something that is truly creative an interesting. Your goal should be to create an environment that facilitates collaborative effort”.

There is more on this Post at Nerdabout Portland. Go there to read the rest.