Where we want to be

While I've been trying to charge the jets over this long restful Canada Day weekend, I've been struggling a bit with something.  The news continues to be filled with the skyrocketing cost of oil and speculations about the reasons for this (and in spite of all the eternal optimists who think that mostly what is behind the current spike is the busy work of speculators, I really do think we're seeing big instabilities emerge because supply is straining to keep pace with demand.  If there was plenty of oil, the market wouldn't twitch every time Iran released a news report or a new hurricane was forecast). 

While we're all worrying about oil prices and what they will mean to our immediate future, much of the discussion has centered on transportation.  In the short term, flying will become a more expensive and less available option for all of us.

Which leads me to the obvious question: why fly?  I haven't managed to collect all of the data I'd like to have on this (I am trying to enjoy a sort of holiday after all), but it seems that most air flight is of the passenger kind.  We're expending lots of dough, burning lots of fuel, and polluting lots of air -- to what end?  It's all about getting our bodies from one place to another, and nothing more than that.  What's a little strange about this is that we have more technology at our disposal than at any time in our history to obviate the need to be there bodily.  Telephone, messaging, email, social networking, wikis, collaborative internet-based applications of all kinds make it possible for us to "be" anywhere at any time.  A few strokes on my keyboard or phone and I can catch up with my brother in Singapore or a friend in Vancouver without rising from my chair. 

The objection most people raise to the idea of replacing  costly travel with cheaper electronic forms of displacement is that, for some things, it's just not the same as "being there."  To close a huge business deal, we need face time.  To commit to the purchase of an expensive piece of equipment, we aren't happy reading spec sheets or looking at photos.  We want to see the thing, run our hands over its surfaces, talk to the people who made it.

But as the extended costs of transportation ratchet steadily upward, we might want to re-think this.  What exactly does it mean to be there.  What kinds of things contribute to that ephemeral sense of presence, and are there ways that we can use technology to duplicate it?  I think that there are.  Visiting a friend last night, he pulled out an old stereoscope to show me (and I think to taunt me a bit as well).  We looked at a grainy old sepia print of some soldiers in the Boer war, and then slid the print into the stereoscope.  My friend told me that the stereo image made him feel more as though he was "there" suggesting that there are measurable degrees of the feeling of "being there."

A couple of weeks ago, I led a realtor friend of mine through a remarkable immersive simulation of a Frank Lloyd Wright home that we've built in our laboratory.  In the simulation, we use a few computer tricks and a very expensive helmet display to present virtual spaces of one kind or another.  When she walked into a simulated sunlit bedroom, she told me that she could feel the warmth of the sun on her arm, as if she were actually "there".  Last week, an architect who has spent much of his life working on 3d visualizations of buildings told me much the same thing.  He was "there". 

All of this suggests to me that the appropriate tools are now available to generate that feeling of "being there", a true telepresence.  Will this feeling alone be enough to lessen the need for transport of the body?  Right now, I suspect not.  What will also be needed is a new way of thinking about what it means to have a body that is not only in one particular place, but extends across the globe (and beyond) using a meshwork of electronic tentacles.  We need some new definitions of what it means that where I actually am is defined more by the location of my awareness and attention than it is by the position of my bum in a chair or my feet on the ground. 

We human beings are built in a strange and wondrous fashion to have this ability to throw awareness from one place to another at our every whim.  It causes us some headaches, but it has also allowed us to build an extraordinary and new type of civilization.  Moving into a viable and sustainable future means harnessing technology that takes advantage of our neural penchants for telepresence.

Comments

[Justin]

Aha... hahah...

What a problem.

I think part of the problem that you're talking about (space, bodies, presence, et al.) is that, while we can adjust our understanding of what it means to be somewhere, such that being somewhere can involve attention being tunneled over the internet, we can't quite yet forget our bodies. And I think this happens for a few reasons, but most significantly being the fact that whenever we strap on a VR headset and see the lady in the red dress dancing about the sunlit room, we reach out to hug her (if we're so lucky), and are obviously stimied. What's this say? Well, we can project our consciousness through cyberspace such that we're attending to other people in a net meeting, whatever, but for at least today and tomorrow we're going to generally have to recognize that our butt's are absolutely in the chair; physicality is as liberating as it is restricting, right? We can get up and move somewhere to greet a friend, but being able to do as much causes us to actually WANT to get up and do that....and the technology to let us satisfy a physically induced need (by virtue of actually having a body) for physical contact, without actually using our physical bodies, just isn't there, yet.

Can you imagine what that technology would be like? A simulation so real that you are no longer aware that you're IN the simulation? The simulator body is the REAL body, and the outside, analog world ceases to exist. I think that's the extreme we would have to go to to fulfill a desire for connectedness, that need for presence, without actually travelling physically somewhere. And then what? Do people trust others enough these days to put them in charge of their simulation? Can we pay people to do that? Utopia or distopia? Truman show meets the matrix?

[colin]

Justin,

Thanks for the very juicy comment! You've hit upon a number of interesting issues.

First, yes I think you're right that having some kind of tactile involvement in VR would make people feel more "present." Funny story: some weeks ago, we set up a demonstration for a colleague of mine who looks at how different kinds of social transactions take place in offices. She was interested in thinking about whether she could do experiments in virtual offices. In the demo, we had a fairly bland office setting with a somewhat disheveled and disturbed looking virtual man who sat on a couch and watched her as she walked about the room. When she approached him, she reached out a hand towards him. On a whim, I put my own hand roughly where his would be to simulate skin contact. She yelped and startled so dramatically that both feet left the ground.

Second, though, I think we know enough about how this technology works to know that there are different degrees of this kind of presence and you can get it sometimes with fairly low-tech arrangements. A student of mine pointed out that in some ways it may not be that different to immersion in a good novel -- also very transporting.

Third, interesting that you've suggested that we'll probably always know the difference between real and virtual settings. I agree. It isn't very likely, in the foreseeable future, that we'll have a true Matrix where it will be possible to become confused about what is real at an explicit conscious level. Yet in our lab we see some shades of this. I may know I'm in a simulation, but I still duck to avoid hitting my head on pixels, feel vertiginous at the top of a flight of stairs, or sweat if you put me on a roller coaster. In a visceral sense, I AM there, and I find it hard to think that these kinds of experiences aren't an important part of what we're seeking when we transport our bodies. It's about feeling, right?

Your last point about trust is interesting. When we use telepresence for business meetings, how do we know that our own movements, expressions and utterances are being faithfully sent down the wire? And how do we know that's what we're getting back? There's much more to be said about all of this. I'll save it for a future post.

[Justin]

.. then I will certainly check back.

You've sent me for a loop by reminding me how immersive books can be, and how 'low-tech' they really are. I'm slightly more inclined now to believe that we'll at some point replace most actual travel with the digital kind.

My first venture will be to project myself as Arnold Schwarzenegger as shown in the film total recall, just to try and crash the hardware... :P

[colin]

I'm glad you'll be back and I'll try to make it worth the trip.

To be clear, I'm not so much talking about improvements to the technology (though these will make a difference) as changes in how we see ourselves. The technology to transport awareness is still relatively new -- even the telephone -- and at the level of everyday usage I don't think we've really factored in all the implications of the fact that we are mentally capable of coping with such devices.