Virtual reality is no substitute for real-life interaction
I have a group of old friends across the country that I like to think of as my internal compass and sounding board for issues of community development and social justice. Last fall, I wrote an email to them with some thoughts about the challenge of working for social change from within government.
“Policy work seems to be a bunch of smart people in buildings in downtown Toronto (or downtown Ottawa) coming up with solutions for problems they’ve never experienced first-hand,” I wrote. “My dream would be for people working in policy to take field trips to shadow people on the front line in whatever area they’re developing policy for, talking to the people who are ultimately affected by the policies they’re designing. Get those folks out of the downtown offices of big cities and out picking tomatoes with migrant workers, or sitting in on language classes for new immigrants, or whatever. That’s my dream.”
Last week in class, we explored another potential method for helping policy professionals understand issues: virtual reality. My wise and wonderful classmates Alex and Harpreet have already made astute observations about the power and possible pitfalls of using virtual reality as a tool to develop empathy for the purposes of policymaking.
I’ll add my own observations to the mix. I worry that using technology to help us understand or relate to the experiences of someone living in a refugee camp, or on a remote First Nations reserve, is no substitute for interaction with real human beings. I know my dream of field trips for policy professionals has lots of practical complications and limitations. But I also know that the moments in my life that have truly changed how I see a social issue are the moments when I have heard directly from a person about their lived experience. An elder sitting at the front of a classroom and sharing how his time in residential school affected his life. A young person who recently came to Canada as a refugee telling me over coffee what it was like to be detained and tortured in his home country. These are the moments I will never forget.
I get that it’s not always going to be possible for policy professionals to travel to an affected community, or to sit down with someone from the group a policy is designed to help. And asking someone to share their story must be done in a careful, responsible, and ethical way. Maybe technology, virtual reality included, is one part of the puzzle in telling those stories we can’t hear for ourselves. But I believe strongly in the power of actual human interaction to educate and to change minds, and I think we could do more to facilitate these connections in the world of policy.
