July 19, 2023

6:15-7:00 pm

Dr. Tom Furness

Founder, Virtual World Society

Dr. Angelina Dayton

Executive Director, Virtual World Society

Dr. Tom Furness, the grandfather for Virtual Reality, believes that we can connect to people across space and time. When he created virtual reality in the 1960s, he knew that it had the capacity to expand our capacity as humans to become better people. Now that he is retired from the University of Washington, his new research is focused on connecting people through virtual reality and understanding how virtual reality can be used to heal humanity.

In this special interactive hybrid session he is eager to demonstrate his methodology through virtual reality from his home in Seattle to illustrate the effects of presence on human empathy and healing. He will join via Zoom to explain his theory and then be present in virtual reality for the audience to witness and experience his experiment in human connection.