PHIL 165 Final Project Angelus McNally

Pictured above is my inspiration for this project, the new ordering screen at Annie's Sandwiches. Customers have a choice upon entering the shop: limit human interaction with others and use the ordering screen to select their sandwich, or have a lovely conversation with Van.

Introduction

If asked to describe what virtual reality (VR) is, most people’s conception of the realm involves a head-mounted display – a device sitting on someone’s head, immersing them in the sights and sounds of a virtual environment. While these types of devices are becoming more popular, affordable, and accessible to the general public as time goes on and technology progresses, there is still a ways to go before the realities they create are generally accepted by society as being just as impactful to one’s life as the physical reality we share. However, as we await the arrival of a popular and populated metaverse, there are countless examples of ways that virtual environments have pervaded our lives to some degree.

In the chapter “AR and the Future of Selves” within Ramirez’s The Ethics of Virtual and Augmented Reality, Ramirez describes the extended reality (XR) spectrum, from simple augmented reality (AR) that changes very few features of an existing physical world to fully immersive VR simulations that place users in a virtual environment that is nothing like the physical environment their body is in. The transformations we will consider in this gallery lie closest to the simple AR end of this spectrum, as they facilitate modest yet nevertheless notable changes in how people interact with their own perception of themselves, with others, and with the world around them. In this gallery, we’ll take a look at a few examples of transformed social interactions and adjacent considerations of how technology has changed human interaction.

Transformations of interactions with the world

This section features examples of the ways that the gradual evolution of technology has changed human interactions through gently altering the reality that its participants are in by changing not necessarily their view of the world, but instead specifically how they interact with and conceptualize certain parts of it. In other words, these examples are not all true forms of augmented reality, but they do augment the traditional way that people interact with the world.

A simple example of one way in which technology has changed how users interact around them is visible in the SCU library. Instead of browsing the stacks of the library and scanning shelves for a book, visitors utilize an online portal as a visualization of the resources available. The physical experience of plucking a book from a shelf is replaced by the click of a button as the robotic system retrieves the desired book.

During our extended time using Zoom as a primary form of communication with others, all students were afforded the same view of the teacher or presenter. This augmented form of the reality of being in a classroom gives students a more even playing field in terms of having access to the professor. This stands in contrast to traditional classrooms, where some students have the advantage of being close to the front board and more able to catch the professor's attention, and some are able to lurk in the back and avoid unwanted attention. In other words, physical spaces like a classroom give students a great degree of flexibility in terms of indicating how participatory they want to be. In contrast, on Zoom, the main way that students can loosely indicate how much they'd like to take part in a discussion is through turning their camera on (willingness to engage) or off (likely not as able or willing to engage at the moment).

In this photo from the 1966 edition of SCU's The Redwood, the spread for P.A.S. (which I can only assume is a photography-related club) shows students posing with traditional film cameras, carefully framing their shots to ensure that their film doesn't go to waste. In the modern-day, digital cameras show us exactly what they'll capture, and give users the chance to reframe and adjust their shot if the photo they take (which they can instantly view after shooting) isn't up to expectations.

Transformations of inter-personal interactions

XR can play a significant role in how people interact with one another. Through this project, I especially noticed various ways that the service industry has been impacted by the digitization of customer interactions. There are countless examples of these types of changed interactions on and around our campus, from within Benson to across the street at Annie’s Sandwiches. As elaborated on in the captions within the project, digitizing these interactions strengthens the barrier between service workers and the customers they serve, which may have subtle yet certain impacts on this division in regard to social class and other factors.

In the first photo, an image from SCU's 1998 edition of The Redwood yearbook, a student uses a corded phone in a dorm to talk to a friend. For decades, landlines were the only way for people to be able to call one another. Back in the day at SCU, it's likely that students flocked to landlines in dorms or to pay phones to contact loved ones. In the second photo, my dad attempts to use a dust-covered landline located in Benson. Nowadays, many more forms of instant communication are available, like FaceTime, which is utilized by Sacha, the user, in the third picture. Video calls give users an additional sense through which they can interact with someone they're calling (adding sight to sound), creating a more immersive experience of communicating with someone. In the near future, video calling is likely to extend to VR, allowing one to feel even more immersed in an environment where they are interacting with someone in a different physical space from their own.

At most grocery stores, customers are offered two options for checkout: self-checkout, or traditional checkout with a cashier. The self-checkout option removes almost all necessary social interaction from the shopping experience, allowing customers to entirely remove their transaction from any reminder of the labor that went into making the products they purchase available to them.

In 2018, Benson Memorial Center was renovated, revolutionizing the way that students order and receive food within the dining hall. For the first few years, ordering touchscreens were placed around the building, where students would be able to create their order and pay, then take their receipt to a food station to get their meal. More recently, this system has been replaced by a mobile app for ordering, through which students can place orders for food from anywhere on- or off-campus. Both of these systems severely limit the interaction that students have with food service workers in Benson. Anecdotally, I've heard that these modern ordering systems have resulted in a less fulfilling work environment for Benson workers, as for many of them, their favorite part of their job is student interaction. This interaction is severely limited if there is no reason for students to talk with Benson workers, considering that the only way they can get food is through mobile ordering.

Transformations of self

The last type of transformed social interactions that we’ll consider, augmentations of the self, is arguably most prevalent among young people through things like filters on social media that alter one’s appearance. These filters can either radically change one’s reflected virtual appearance, or make subtle changes that a user can conflate with their own perception of themselves. These types of transformations are particularly impactful to young people who are still developing their senses of self, as their reflections in the virtual world may lead to dysmorphia in how they see themselves in the physical world.

Here, Sacha, the user, tries out a Snapchat filter that shows her with a wider mouth than physically possible. She recreates this silly face without the use of the filter as well. This filter gives the user a view of themselves that isn't particularly close to reality. There is certainly a spectrum to be considered in this realm, between unaugmented reflections of one's self, to simple changes that may add makeup or a color filter (Ramirez, The Ethics of Virtual and Augmented Reality), to unrealistic alterations that could never truly reflect what the user looks like in the physical world.

This Snapchat filter augments a user's body to visualize what tattoos would look like across their arms and neck. Sacha, the user, doesn't have any tattoos, but the filter allows her to see what she would look like if she had them. Immediately upon seeing the filter, she remarked "Well, now I know that I should never get tattoos like this". Relatively minimal filters like this one serve as an augmented reality view of a change that someone could make to their body before actually making it.

This is just a photo of a page in the 2002 - 2003 edition of The Redwood, because I found it fascinating to see how student use of and reliance on technology has evolved, but purposes for using it have remained largely the same -- to communicate with friends, play games, do homework, and listen to music. I can only assume that this trend will continue as technology and VR spaces become a larger part of our daily lives.

Created By

Angelus McNally

Appreciate

Credits:

Header image is by sofiko14 - "Five multiracial young students wearing virtual reality glasses indoor - Happy people having fun with new technology vr headset goggles - New generation mania trends concept"