Glenn Cantave is an African American activist. I recently listened to a TED talk he gave, where he spoke about his group Movers and Shakers’ efforts to have monuments which celebrated colonisation and slavery, replaced with more modern and diverse historical figures.

Having failed to get support for the removal of some of the cities physical statues, his group created digital alternatives. Now people visiting key public spaces or even the subway, can see digital recreations of Serena Williams or Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the National Anthem. 

The idea, and indeed the need, for greater diversity in our historical monuments is not new.  I don’t subscribe to the theory -  you can’t be, what you can’t see –  as history is full of people doing the previously unimaginable. But I do believe, it takes a lot more effort and determination to be able to imagine options that might not readily present themselves. So by showing more options, what Movers & Shakers is trying to do is great and easily replicable all over the world.

But it got me thinking along a different tangent. Could Augmented Reality(AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) improve our emotional understanding of key moments in history?

Specifically, my first thought was trying to understand what it might have been like to have marched in the Suffragette movement. While words come alive from well written pages, to think I could potentially put on some VR goggles and march with them, seemed to me an amazing way to experience history and to get a much deeper sense of the society, the women, their motives , their fears and their courage.

That sense of an emotional connection, then made me think about empathy. Could AR/VR better drive our capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference. Ie. to walk a mile in another’s shoes

For example, I have often wondered what it would be like to be a newly arrived immigrant, or observant Muslim or Jewish woman, moving through her day in Sydney. What sort of difficulties and joys would she experience and how would they differ from mine?  

And while I can listen to podcasts and talk to women about their experiences, its not the same as actually walking a mile in their shoes. 

Apart from helping me in my selfish pursuit of greater enlightenment, could AR/VR perhaps be used more forcefully for social good on a grander scale? 

For example, could it help local communities/ immediate neighbours to better understand and welcome refugees into the area? I can imagine spending 2 hours in an AR headset as a non-English speaking refugee,  trying to buy food, connect your electricity, catch a bus, get kids to school or even just meet your neighbour, could be quite an eye-opening experience for many who have never had to experience complete displacement.

Or what about bullying at school? Would it be less likely for bullies to emerge in schoolyards if all kids were made to experience being bullied themselves? Would acceptance and inclusion increase, if all children and adults were able to experience what it might be like for a child in a wheelchair or with some other physical difference to get around the school?

I figured there must be lots of great examples of AR/VR for greater understanding, empathy and social good already in existence, I just needed to look. 

Sure enough, here are centres and organisations looking at this idea of “empathy on scale” through VR/AR experiences in a number of locations around the world. 

Interestingly, it seems it is being harnessed by many organisations quite effectively to ramp-up fundraising capabilities.  One article I read noted : The impact of VR on fundraising has been significant for UNICEF. VR has proven to increase the propensity to stop and engage, increase the inclination to donate after engagement and also led to an increased average donation value.

But it is also being used in everything from Road Safety campaigns, where drivers are asked to move around as cyclists and vice versa, to understanding what a jailed journalist might experience in interrogation or a prisoner in isolation, to understanding what it might be like to be someone with limited or no vision or even mental illnesses.

Quite a remarkable variety. And given the fairly recent arrival of high-resolution, good-quality AR/VR tech, I’d say the potential for use in other scenarios is pretty much unlimited at this stage.

Which all sounds pretty exciting.

One of the many sites I visited was the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University, they have a number of interesting programs, including one called 1000 Cut Journey, which walks you through racism experienced at different ages through the eyes of an African-American male.

But what really grabbed me from their site was one particular sentence – lost amongst a page of other text – 

Researchers know little to nothing about how this novel technology will change social interaction. 

That gave me pause. 

Perhaps in my enthusiasm to imagine the potential for greater understanding, I’ve missed some of the potential dangers. 

What if immersing people in AR/VR experiences overwhelms them, what if it creates greater insecurity, fear, desensitisation or mental trauma. 

That made me wonder how much psychological care and ethical design is being considered in the creation of these VR/AR experiences? 

Good intentions seldom guarantee good outcomes.

A quick search, indicates the industry appears not to be specifically regulated yet, other than through film, television and gaming type regulations in some countries? Is this enough?

 Early evidence seems to indicate that the combination of physical movement, while immersed in a VR/AR world utilising high quality content and affecting all senses, can genuinely affect your behaviour in real-life.  More so than seeing a particularly gripping or moving film or other visual content.

So do we need to borrow ethical or regulatory frameworks from health practitioners perhaps or is there another way to try to ensure this technology is used for good, not evil?

In Anton Krutz’s Armageddon article, Why Augmented Reality Will Be Remarkable And Virtual Reality Will Be Regulated , he notes that AR might remain a power for good, given that it simply sits over the top of Genuine Reality (real-life) and thus never fully breaks the brain’s connection to the real world. VR however, replaces Genuine Reality and the mind’s connection to the real world and thus….

Inevitably, Virtual Reality technology will advance until its commercial and illicit use will have devastating affects on society. There will be lawsuits against the companies, wherever they may be in the world, making and using this technology. The government will also start targeting those same companies due to the technology being used by criminal organization and rogue nations. Eventually, government will regulate all Virtual Reality technology and designate its use solely to approved agencies. 

That’s a fairly pessimistic view of the future of the tech, and I hope he is wrong. But it does highlight that perhaps this needs a bit more attention from citizens, ethical institutions and Governments than it might currently be getting. 

By Kylie Hargreaves

IdeaSpies Energy Editor