Questions about Helen Papagiannis’ “Augmented Human”…
A few questions raised by Papagiannis’ Augmented Human…
- Pace Althusser and Zizek, isn’t the point at which technology becomes invisible precisely the point at which it becomes the most ideological?
- Isn’t AR’s promise of a uniquely tailored user experience antithetical to its other supposed promise of being “the ultimate empathy machine” precisely because AR individuates, rather than bridges, subjectivity? Or is the different kind and degree of immersion between AR and VR what makes the former a personalized experience and the latter an empathy machine?
- Despite the good intentions for AR technology helping people with disabilities, this runs against certain advocates and disabilities studies thinkers who assert that there is nothing “wrong” or in need of correction with certain impairments. Does corrective AR put undue burden on those with disabilities to “correct” themselves to accord with a normative human body? Could corrective AR deprive us of different ways of knowing or sensing the world?
- What are we to make of the reference to the “White Christmas” episode of Black Mirror given that it doesn’t note the overtly dystopian, nightmarish quality of “optical camouflage,” instead presenting the technology as most likely a force for good? Papagiannis glosses over the implications of “optical camouflage” in the hands of, say, racists or homophobes (given that Facebook can accurately guess someone’s sexual orientation with only 7 data points).
- This is so basic a question that it may sink like a lead balloon, but it’s been nagging me throughout the entire course, so… most of our readings and conversations have as an a priori assumption that immersion and interactivity are good and desirable. Are they? Why?