If there was any doubt left that the VR Tech ecosystem is maturing nicely, we need look no further than the huge number of accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces and university courses that have cropped up like mushrooms over the past few months.

The number of dedicated #VR accelerators cropping up shows how the ecosystem maturing
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Among these new VR-focused accelerators entering the race to harness the emerging enthusiasm and talent for building virtual worlds are Vive X (HTC Vive’s own program), Samsung NEXT, our own Upload Collective, and the SXSW Accelerator, but even the illustrious MIT has now thrown its hat into the ring.

MIT's accelerator offers $20,000 and mentoring to start-ups exploring technologies like VR
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You can find out more about their Play Labs initiative – which is offering mentorship and $20,000 to launch ideas around “Playful Technologies” such as AR/VR/MR – in this UploadVR article

MIT launches a VR accelerator for students and alumni. via @alicebonasio @MIT #VR #AR https://t.co/szYYmpwc1Q pic.twitter.com/Oc3AAlxvmM

— Upload (@UploadVR) January 25, 2017

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Automation has already made many jobs redundant, and as Artificial Intelligence becomes increasingly sophisticated, many more will inevitably follow. But it’s not all doom and gloom.

Human creative skills will always be in demand
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In this Quartz article I talk about how human creative skills will always be in demand, and how restructuring our value system – from education to the workplace – around creativity will help us prepare for the wave of technological disruption to come.

Don’t want a robot to steal your job? Be creative https://t.co/3rW3WijaEw

— Quartz (@qz) January 13, 2017

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We hear a lot about the digital skills gap and the need to get more kids interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). I’m all for that. But there’s a missing link in that line of thought, which more people are starting to notice. We should be encouraging STEAM – in other words adding “Art’ (in its broadest sense) to that list because creativity is an essential ingredient of technological innovation. And like any other skill, it needs to be taught, developed and encouraged from an early age and throughout our lives.

In this Huffington Post article I talk to Creative Director Chris Waind from Canadian start-up Finger Food Studios (the company behind Sphero’s app and collaborative platform) about how designers and other professionals in the technology industry need to develop diverse skil-sets and embrace divergent thinking, and what he looks for when recruiting his own creative tech talent.

Creativity and Technology go together like a horse carriage
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From STEM to STEAM: How Science Needs Creativity to Flourish https://t.co/R4FV42C3SQ via @HuffPostBlog @Sphero… https://t.co/MhlbWBdYoW

— Tecntrend (@alicebonasio) January 8, 2017

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A new collaboration between IBM and the New York Times T Brand Studio was unveiled at CES Las Vegas last week showcasing the work of female STEM pioneers through AR.

The Outthink Hidden experience is available through the T Brand Studio AR app which can be download for free on iTunes and Google Play. It works like a virtual museum where people can explore a range of 3D graphics, written stories, and audiovisual narratives to find out the tales behind 10 key innovators in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics fields.

The app was inspired by the recently released film Hidden Figures, which tells the true story of how three female African American mathematicians who programmed the first-of-its kind IBM mainframe at NASA in the early 1960s and played a key role in the historic mission that put John Glenn into orbit.

“We were inspired to use this app to share the stories of unsung STEM innovators who have changed the lives of people around the world.” said Ann Rubin, Vice President, Branded Content and Global Creative, IBM.

Perhaps by shining this spotlight on this untold tale of the 1960s Space Race, we can help to inspire greater interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, specially amongst women. It fits into a broader range of initiatives such as Stemettes, whose co-founder Anne-Marie Imafidon has been recognized with an MBE in the latest New Years Honours list and the important work in education advocacy championed by First Lady Michelle Obama, which was movingly reflected in her final official speech last week.

Perhaps by shining a spotlight on this untold tale of the 1960s Space Race, we can inspire interest in STEM
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The New York Times has been pushing VR content for a while now, but this is their first major AR initiative, and it potentially allows them to reach a wider audience, by enabling people to experience immersive content without need for a separate headset. It instead deploys sensors to activate a digital layer that augments the space using 3D images, audio, video, and descriptive text, displaying these using just the mobile device screen.

Dorothy Vaughan taught herself and others how to program NASA’s IBM mainframe
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The AR content is activated on those mobile devices thorough special print editions of the New York Times and 150 “geofenced” locations across the U.S. in cities such as New York, LA, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas and San Francisco as well as notable STEM hubs like NASA Langley Research Center, Kennedy Space Center, the Computer History Museum in San Francisco and Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Science, or universities including Duke, Cornell and Princeton.

The app highlights the story and accomplishments of three of the film’s “hidden figures” including Dorothy Vaughan, who taught herself and others how to program NASA’s IBM mainframe, in addition to other STEM pioneers including Bessie Blount Griffin, who invented a feeding device for injured World War II veterans and Sara Josephine Baker, who changed the way the world thought about public health, creating the role of the school nurse.

“When we spoke to IBM about their work with ‘Hidden Figures, we recognized that this was an opportunity to bring users into the experience of the film and the remarkable women it showcases,” Said the New York Times’ Senior VP of Advertising and Innovation Sebastian Tomich.

Getting women involved in STEM remains an enormous challenge even in the 21^st Century. So it remains crucial that we not only support grassroots initiatives like KizCode – which enable girls to learn and contribute through key skills such as coding –  but to provide inspiration and role models that this next promising generation of female scientists and technologists can relate to, and be inspired by.

Getting women involved in STEM fields remains a great challenge
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Let’s for a moment set aside war, celebrity deaths, terrorism and the impeding political Armageddon, and focus on what was good about 2016: VR.

2016 was a great year for VR, if little else
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This was the year when Virtual Reality became a buzzword and we started talking about “experiences,” and how immersive they all were. But as exciting as these have undoubtedly been, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The really good stuff is yet to come, but 2016 gave some good hints about what’s in in store.

As the real world becomes an increasingly uncertain and unwelcoming place, perhaps it’s no coincidence that we’re so keen to make virtual worlds work out. Maybe we’re indeed headed for a Ready Player One Oasis-type scenario, but if the range and depth of VR I’ve come across over the past few months is anything to go by, it might not turn out to be such a grim fate after all…

VR let us get that Superman(or woman) feeling by flying around in VR using Google Earth and witness Andy Murray’s Wimbledon Victory from the middle of Centre Court, or the Olympics in Rio. With VR people can already experience different places such as West Hollywood, but the technology can also help you fight phobias, and even reunite an elderly war hero with the community he helped save during World War II.

You can get that Superman(or woman) feeling by flying around in VR using Google Earth
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We’ve also seen some beautiful and powerful examples of how VR is being used in storytelling and I talked to creators about the shaping the language and conventions of this new medium. When leveraged properly, VR has also shown great potential as a tool for tackling difficult issues and engendering empathy. From the BBC project showing the plight of a refugee family fleeing Syria to making us care about the demise of coral reefs.

From virtual books to sports coaching many companies are exploring the potential of VR for education
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From virtual books to sports coaching many companies are exploring the potential of VR for education, as the opportunities for engaging students with content quickly become apparent and tools like Google cardboard made the technology easily accessible to teachers and students around the world.

In April I went to Linden Lab’s Headquarters in San Francisco and discussed the potential of VR for education with their CEO Ebbe Altberg, who explained how their virtual platform Second Life had already been used by Universities and that while the creative SL community did use the legacy platform, they were now investing in a brand new platform to allow users to generate and share their own VR content, Sansar.

We also discussed how the platform would inevitably be used for less “Safe for Work” purposes and how Virtual Reality Porn might help to drive the technology towards mass-market adoption much as it did for the Internet itself. While in the beautiful City by the Bay I also geeked out at their amazing arcade museum and mused about how we can see the evolution of VR from those early machines.

Tools like Google cardboard made VR accessible to teachers and students
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Sansar is not the only player emerging in the social VR space, however. Earlier in the year I saw some interesting developments from Improbable in London and AltspaceVR is pushing ahead with initiatives like allowing punters to watch live events such as comedy shows in VR. One of the challenges of making social interaction in such platforms, work, however, is to create a sense of presence – which requires creating more realistic personalized avatars – and making people comfortable in VR for longer periods of time, which means tackling issues such as simulator sickness.

One challenge of Social VR work is to create a sense of presence, and that means better avatars
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And let’s not forget games of course, VR is a whole lot of fun and although I definitely don’t have as much time as I’d like for playing them, I came across some interesting titles, such as HOVR by independent Lebanese studio Game Cooks, and popular Swedish game SVRVIVE, not to mention my own personal, longstanding obsession: Resident Evil

Even without the expensive headsets, people have been doing amazing things with AR
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When I finally got my hands on the HoloLens for the first time I was rather blown away, and while Magic Leap came under intense fire for allegedly misleading people about its demo videos, causing some to question whether they can deliver on their promise of fully immersive, untethered mixed reality – there were plenty of signs that AR and MR have a bright future indeed.

I was blown away by my HoloLens Demo
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Even without the expensive headsets, people have been doing amazing things with AR such as supporting surgeons in war zones and teaching children digital and creative skills. Many of the interesting projects I came across were from relatively small companies exploring specific niches; One start-up in Russia was crowdfunding development of Mixed Reality lessons to bring subjects like Chemistry and Physics to life, and even the Adult industry got in on the action, producing a low-budget workaround to project live holograms of a much naughtier kind to users around the world using just their mobile phones and a cheap adaptor. And with players like Apple giving out strong signals that they are about to enter this “ARena” (sorry, couldn’t resist) things are bound to get very interesting in 2017.

Watch this space.

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Are Holograms going to forever change the way we learn? HoloStudy, a Russian start-up developing content for the Microsoft HoloLens certainly thinks so.

In this article for IDG Connect I talk to them about why Holograms and Mixed Reality are the best tools to enable learning and engage students, and how they’re hoping their newly launched crowdfunding campaign will help them make these Mixed Reality lessons accessible students all over the world, for free.

Holograms will enable visual learning on an entirely new level and revolutionise education
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Making holograms in the classroom a reality, by @alicebonasio from @CIOonline – https://t.co/AbWOH7ucRs

— Technology Experts (@IDGCN) December 19, 2016

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Magic Leap has been the poster child for Mixed Reality ever since they unveiled their first impressive demo footage, but questions are now being asked about whether they can really deliver the mind-blowing type of experience promised by those early videos.

This article for UploadVR sets out what we know so far about the notoriously secretive start-up and talks to other key players in the Augmented/Mixed Reality space.

With a thriving #MR ecosystem emerging, is Magic Leap's walled garden approach still a good strategy?
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With the HoloLens producing impressive early results and a thriving ecosystem starting to develop around MR technology, can the “Walled Garden” approach favoured by Magic Leap still prove an effective strategy? It’s difficult to say at this point, but we’d certainly like to have a chance to ask them!

The future of mixed reality is much bigger than Magic Leap. via @alicebonasio #MR #MixedReality https://t.co/2DOyuCsVb1 pic.twitter.com/FAp0zWIPKD

— Upload (@UploadVR) December 16, 2016

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Apple is such a secretive company that most of the time we don’t really know what they’re working on until they unveil a new product. The famous “And one more thing…” flourish that Steve Jobs perfected is their trademark, and it means that journalists reporting on upcoming launches have to interpret remarks and rumours, of which there are always plenty.

Apple has given strong hints that it's planning an Augmented Reality product #AR
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In this article for iDrop News I attempt to piece together all the evidence I could find to try and build a picture of how Apple might be looking to get in on the Augmented/Mixed Reality market, following Tim Cook’s comments saying that the future of AR was bigger than VR.

Apple Is Secretly Developing Revolutionary VR & AR Technology, Here’s Everything We Know #applenews https://t.co/H5yOt21yQw via @iDropNews

— iDrop News (@iDropNews) November 30, 2016

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From the Internet of Things to Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, the Great Detective gives us some enduring insight into cutting-edge Technology.

In this article published in Quartz I examine how the Victorians who lived in Holmes’ London also lived in a time of huge technological upheaval, and how that revolution informed Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories.

The picture, in case you’re wondering, is of my dog Watson.

The Victorians lived at a time of huge technological disruption
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Sherlock Holmes was the original technology disrupter https://t.co/FRc5iivXv5

— Quartz (@qz) November 30, 2016

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I love Mixed Reality and REALLY want a HoloLens of my own, but in spite of all those hints I don’t think I’m going to get one in my Christmas stocking this year… But one company can’t quite wait to get Mixed Reality into the hands of consumers, and they’re proposing to do that for just $30. In this UploadVR article we meet Zappar, a British start-up with the big ambition to become the “Google Cardboard of MR.”

ZapBox is proposing to give users a Mixed Reality experience for a hundredth of the HoloLens cost
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Extra Brownie points for anybody who gets the Black Mirror reference.

.@ZapparApp is bringing a mixed reality experience for just $30. via @alicebonasio#AR#MRhttps://t.co/Q50UbqsmEmpic.twitter.com/dprweL6CtQ

— Upload (@UploadVR) November 29, 2016

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