Cyberselves: How Immersive Technologies will Impact our Future Selves

长期以来，人们一直着迷于超越我们身体的极限，将我们自己投射到身体之外，进入一个不同的身体，甚至进入一个完全不同的世界。从通过恍惚或迷幻药物使用带来的神秘体验，到电影幻想，如黑客帝国，阿凡达和代理人，这些经历是梦想和愿望的来源，但也引起了对未来的巨大焦虑和恐惧。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以外的角度体验世界的可能性正在成为我们所有人的可能性。这样的沉浸式技术，通过它你有一种令人信服的感觉，就像在另一个地方或身体里一样，现在就在这里。随着越来越多的人将时间和精力投入到社交媒体、虚拟或“网络”现实中的生活中，我们的网络自我，我们在这些虚拟世界中成为的人，对我们来说可能会变得和我们的“真实的”自我一样重要。我们可能开始发现很难区分这些不同版本的自己，或者我们可能希望过不同的生活，一个在“肉体空间”，一个或更多，在网络空间。由于技术发展如此迅速，几乎没有时间考虑广泛深入和长期沉浸可能对人们，他们的关系和我们的社会产生的变革性影响，真实的和虚拟的。当这些技术还在发展的时候，我们迫切需要提出一些重要的问题，关于我们希望为自己塑造什么样的自我，或者我们希望抑制什么样的世界，以及我们希望在这些世界中生活的规则。我们的Cyberselves项目认为，我们必须研究沉浸式技术对我们社会和文化的变革性影响。我们的项目将为非传统地点的人们带来身临其境的娱乐体验，Cyberselves路演，这将使参与者有机会将自己运送到人形机器人的身体中，并从机械身体中体验世界。使用最先进的动作捕捉，虚拟现实和机器人设备，我们在谢菲尔德机器人公司开发了一个系统，该系统将为参与者提供先进的远程呈现体验，并有机会与文化研究人员，哲学家，工程师和机器人开发人员谈论他们的经验：什么是好的，什么是坏的，什么让他们对未来感到兴奋，什么最让他们担心。通过与广泛的公众、行业合作伙伴、教育工作者和政策制定者合作，我们希望更好地了解人们想要什么，不想要什么，以便这些技术对那些生活影响最大的人更真正有用。我们希望利用我们的项目，让用户推动技术发展，并有真实的，有意义的投入（i）公众对话这些技术是什么，以及他们对我们自己的概念做了什么作为“人类”在不同的“社会”，（ii）道德和法律的挑战，这些技术将不可避免地迫使我们面对，及（iii）技术本身的方向及设计。我们希望，通过了解是什么驱动了技术背后的梦想和愿望，以及新技术经常引发的噩梦，我们可以促进一场关于网络自我生活的潜在好处和风险的文化和科学辩论。

People have long been fascinated with the idea of transcending the limits of our physical bodies, of projecting ourselves outside of our bodies, into a different body, or even into a radically different world. From mystical experiences brought about through trance or psychedelic drug use, to film fantasies such as The Matrix, Avatar and Surrogates, such experiences are the source of dreams and aspirations, but also give rise to great anxiety and fear about the future. 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. Such immersive technologies, through which you have the compelling feeling of being in another place or body, are here now. As more and more people devote time and energy to life in social media, virtual or 'cyber' realities, our cyberselves, the people who we become in these virtual worlds could become as important to us as our 'real' selves. We may start to find it hard to distinguish between these different versions of ourselves, or we may wish to lead distinct lives, one in 'meatspace' and one, or many more, in cyberspaces.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. There is a pressing need, while these technologies are still being developed, to ask important questions, about the kind of selves we wish to fashion for ourselves, or the kinds of worlds we want to inhibit, and what rules we want to live by in those worlds. Our Cyberselves project thinks it imperative that we examine the transforming impact of immersive technologies on our societies and cultures. Our project will bring an immersive, entertaining experience to people in unconventional locations, a Cyberselves Roadshow, that will give participants the chance to transport themselves into the body of a humanoid robot, and to experience the world from that mechanical body. Using state-of-the-art motion capture, virtual reality and robotics equipment, we have developed at Sheffield Robotics a system that will give participants a sophisticated experience of telepresence, and a chance to talk to cultural researchers, philosophers, engineers and robotics developers about their experiences: what is good, what is bad, what excites them for the future and what most worries them. By collaborating with a wide cross-section of the public, industrial partners, educators and policymakers, we hope to understand better what people want, and do not want, from such technologies, so that these technologies are more genuinely useful to those people on whose lives they will have the most impact. We want to use our project to allow users to drive technological development, and have real, meaningful input into (i) the public conversations on what these technologies are for, and what they are doing to our concept of ourselves as 'humans' in different 'societies', (ii) the ethical and legal challenges that such technologies will inevitably force us to confront, and (iii) the direction and design of the technologies themselves. We hope that by understanding what drives the dreams and aspirations behind technology, and the nightmares that new technologies so often give rise to, we can promote a culturally- and scientifically-informed debate about the potential benefits and risks of living as cyberselves.