Cyberselves in Immersive Technologies

从出神或服用迷幻药带来的神秘体验，到《黑客帝国》、《阿凡达》和《替身》等电影幻想，人们一直着迷于将自我投射到身体之外，或投射到另一个身体，甚至是一个完全不同的世界。在历史和文学中，这样的经历经常被描述为一种改变生命的事件——通过超越肉体的限制，或者完全离开自己的身体，也许暂时居住在另一个身体里，你可能会以新的、更开明的方式来看待和理解自己。随着下一代虚拟现实和远程呈现技术的发展，从我们自己的眼睛后面的角度体验世界的可能性正在成为我们所有人的可能性。完全沉浸式的技术即将问世，通过这种技术，你会有一种身临其境的强烈感觉，科学家和技术人员每天都在发现新的方法来直接操纵你在哪里、做什么、甚至是谁的体验。随着越来越多的人把时间和精力投入到虚拟或“网络”现实的生活中——以不同程度的沉浸——我们的网络自我，我们在这些虚拟世界中成为的人，对我们来说可能变得和我们的“真实”自我一样重要。由于技术进步如此之快，我们几乎没有时间考虑深度和长时间沉浸的广泛访问可能对人们、他们的关系和我们的社会（现实和虚拟）产生的变革性影响；例如，虚拟世界不如现实世界“真实”的观点正受到一些人的挑战，对他们来说，网络关系比“现实”生活中的关系更重要。“沉浸式技术中的网络自我”项目认为，我们有必要研究沉浸式技术对我们社会和文化的变革影响。为了有效地做到这一点，需要一种多学科的方法，包括人文和科学的方法。我们的项目包括哲学家和文化理论家，与心理学家、技术专家和认知科学家一起工作。我们试图探索和理解沉浸的概念，无论是在历史和文化背景下，还是在“此时此地”——研究沉浸式技术是如何运作的，以及它是如何影响我们的大脑和身体的。我们计划从这些分析中得出关于这项技术近期和长期的文化认知和可能的社会影响的结论。我们的项目将涉及使用虚拟现实环境的实验研究，并将沉浸在虚拟世界中的体验与通过远程呈现（远程呈现）接口与先进的人形机器人体验真实世界的体验进行比较。我们将使用最先进的动作捕捉、虚拟现实和机器人设备，这些设备已经在谢菲尔德机器人中心和巴塞罗那庞培法布拉大学运行，以探索沉浸式体验的客观和主观方面，并了解我们对身体的概念如何被这种体验所改变。通过跨学科合作，并将这种方法与文化和伦理分析相结合，我们期望(i)提高对围绕虚拟现实和投射自我概念的文化、历史和意识形态构建的理解；（ii）改变认知科学家研究沉浸式和虚拟现实技术的方式，将其作为一种发现更多关于自我本质的方式；（iii）识别关键的文化焦虑和沉浸式技术带来的未来社会挑战；（iv）推动一场科学和文化上的辩论，讨论更多时间以网络自我的方式生活的潜在好处和风险。

From mystical experiences brought about through trance or psychedelic drug use, to film fantasies such as The Matrix, Avatar and Surrogates people have long been fascinated with the idea of projecting the self outside of the body, or into a different body, or even into a radically different world. In history and in literature, such an experience is often described as a life-transforming event-through transcending corporal limits, or leaving your own body entirely, perhaps to temporarily inhabit another, you might come to see and understand yourself in new and more enlightened ways. With the development of next generation virtual reality and telepresence technologies, the possibility of experiencing the world from a point-of-view other than that from behind our own eyes is becoming a possibility for all of us. Fully immersive technologies, through which you have the compelling feeling of being in another place or body, are on the near horizon, and scientists and technologists are everyday discovering new ways to directly manipulate your experience of where, what, or even who, you are. As more-and-more people devote time and energy to life in virtual or 'cyber' realities-with different degrees of immersion-our cyberselves, the people who we become in these virtual worlds, could become as important to us as our 'real' selves. Since the technologies are advancing so rapidly, there has been little time to consider the transformative effects that widespread access to deep and prolonged immersion could have on people, their relationships, and our societies (both real and virtual); for example, the idea that the virtual world is less 'authentic' than the physical one is being challenged by people for whom their cyber-relationships are more important than those happening in 'real' life.The "Cyberselves in Immersive Technologies" project considers it imperative that we examine the transforming impact of immersive technologies on our societies and cultures. To do so effectively, a multi-disciplinary approach is required that embraces methods from both the humanities and sciences. Our project includes philosophers and cultural theorists, working alongside psychologists, technologists, and cognitive scientists. We seek to explore and understand the notion of immersion both in its historical and cultural contexts, and in the 'here and now'-examining how immersive technology operates and how it effects our brains on bodies. We plan to draw from these analyses conclusions about the cultural perception and likely social impact of this technology near- and long-term.Our project will involve experimental studies using a virtual reality environment, and the comparison of immersion in this virtual world with that of experiencing the real world through telepresence (remote presence) interfaces to an advanced humanoid robot. We will use state-of-the-art motion capture, virtual reality and robotics equipment already operating at the Sheffield Centre for Robotics and the University of Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona to explore objective and subjective aspects of the immersive experience and to understand how our conceptions of our bodies may be transformed by such experience. By collaborating across disciplines and by combining this approach with cultural and ethical analyses we expect to (i) generate an improved understanding of the cultural, historical and ideological constructions around the notion of virtual reality and the projected self; (ii) transform the way that cognitive scientists investigate immersive and virtual reality technologies as a way of discovering more about the nature of the self; (iii) identify critical cultural anxieties and future societal challenges raised by immersive technologies; and (iv) promote a scientifically- and culturally- informed debate about the potential benefits and risks of living more of our lives as cyberselves.