By Jamaal Ryan
“There are very few African American men in this country who
haven’t had the experience of being followed when they are shopping in a
department store. That includes me.”
After the verdict passed for the Trayvon Martin case, President
Barack Obama gave an unscheduled speech at a White House briefing on the Friday after
George Zimmerman trial, taking a few minutes to paint his experience as a Black
male in America.
It’s an experience that many understand, but cannot
empathize with. The looks. The unwarranted hostility. The avoidance. The incapability
of blending in. But slip on an Oculus Rift, and you just might be able to
empathize a little.
BeAnotherLab is
experimenting with ways to allow people to trade bodies with one another. One
of their most prized experiments is GenderSwap which takes a male and a female subject wearing Oculus headsets and
switches their perspectives. The man sees everything the woman sees; the woman
sees everything the man sees. Through a series of mirrored self and collaborative
tactile gestures and sensations (running their hands over their bodies,
touching each other’s hands), the experiment seeks to facilitate a “body swap”,
allowing both subjects to feels as if they’re in each other bodies.
The experiments extend to physically challenged individuals
who get a chance to see themselves without their ambulatory limitations; and
ideas for the concept consider addressing gender dysphoria, a psychological disorder in which the
individual feels as if they’re the opposite gender to their physical make up.
Ideas on how to use the technology also allow looking at
addressing implicit bias and issues concerning racial misunderstanding. As a
Black man, I can give lectures all day on the subtleties and not-so-subtleties
of incidents that I have experienced. These young men cover contact with law
enforcement far more profoundly than I could.
But think about how an Oculus Rift can change that. Think about
how this form of “other people simulators” can emulate the social navigation of
being a Black male. And I don’t just want to reserve it to Blacks, we can’t ignore
Hispanics, Middle Easterners, Asians, the disabled, plus sized, transgenders,
the mentally ill, and any other underrepresented groups that I missed.
At a new staff
orientation at the psychiatric hospital that I interned at, we were shown this
video.
It was enough for me to build a new level of understanding
and empathy that I’ve never had for the mentally ill population, particularly
those diagnosed with schizophrenia.
But a generated simulation in virtual reality with an Oculus
Rift emulating people different from us can thread a human connection that hadn’t
existed there before.
Thanks Polygon
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