Podcast transcript: Rise of Simulated Spaces
This podcast is part of the UCIL Digital Society course from the University of Manchester. The story it relates to is hosted on Medium and can be found here.
In this podcast Sara Knurowska and Salma Ghandour introduces the topic — Rise of Simulated Spaces.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello all, I am Sara Knurowska, a budding synthetic biologist and student at the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health.
And I am Salma, a recent graduate, current intern, and aspiring academic.
Welcome Digital Society students to this week’s topic ‘Post-Body World’, in which we discuss how new technologies such as spatial computing, VR and AR are blurring the boundaries between the physical and non-physical reality.
With the release of Meta’s metaverse, it has become increasingly clear that we are entering the next stage of digital existence; the technologies that were being built since the 80s such as virtual reality goggles are being released commercially.
As someone who is very present in multiple online communities, it has been important to take a critical look at who owns them and what these monopolies mean for how I choose to construct my digital self. Who decides what I see and how does this influence me?
We explore the extent of our interactions with digital spaces. This week builds upon other topics of the course, critically engaging with ideas of identity, the internet, and ethics, the course encourages you to envision what you want from our digital spaces and shape the future.
We ask you to reflect on the emerging hardware and software technologies that are forming what some consider the ‘embodied’ internet, the metaverse. We discuss how Meta, previously known as Facebook, has spent the last few years curating its image and partnerships to maintain its monopoly over the emerging technologies.
We then reflect on the complex social issues of virtual bodies and we touch upon the construction of the gendered gaze. We communicate differently, we see each other differently, which then raises questions around our physical identities and our virtual bodies. These ideas are embedded in the advancement of evolving technology.
Finally, we discuss brain-computer interfaces, newly available devices that could help us restore and improve our physical capabilities, and the challenges to their development.
We hope you enjoy this week’s topic!
