I watched the first hour as indicated by Ingrid, and found the ideas around VR refreshing and it showed me ideas that I didn’t propose would be applicable to this medium.
It begins by speaking that it’s unregulated in VR. There have been aspects of research into how content should be produced for VR, the VR world in itself has ethics around enhanced virtual media. Including immersive media such as chatrooms.
With the explosion of XR content, the literature has been added and increased every year, is it is for the good or for the bad? How do we address the value of the content? The effect of the content on the consumer.
Harassment and sexual harassment in XR is possible, there are no laws. We’re free to do horrible things we want including horrible graphic acts. Murder, rape, theft, torture. Should we be free to create this content? I don’t think so.
There is also an ethical and moral perspective to VR. What happens in virtual reality is just as bad as in reality. And creators of VR content should try not to replicate the harm and stress that can happen in real life.
There have been experiments into the effect of VR on consumers and it’s been shown that people are just as likely to follow orders on VR as in reality. It doesn’t change whether or not it’s real-life or virtual. This does give the designer of the environment and experience to consider what they are making the consumer do in the VR environment.
Here are the ethical challenges of immersive media and how we can address them.
- Misrepresentation
Creating experiences that mistakenly misrepresent reality. The idea that virtual reality can create ideas and false representations of real life, can this relate to a game as well? To present the game to its most realistic. I also question this to the other extreme, why does everything need to be represented accurately?
- Bias
Stereotyping creates bias. Example GTA, and the stereotypes the game has. It creates false beliefs and if those people go into VR, they feel disenfranchised. It’s not something we want to keep making, we want to avoid this.
3. Psychological harm of others
- Potential user trauma;
- Improper behaviour in real life
- Improper distance
VR can allow us to embrace empathy when we were able to experience the life of another person. But there is cognitive empathy and emotional empathy.
- Accessibility to fully immersive experiences
VR content is designed with a user in mind that can see, hear and move without restrictions. We don’t anticipate how to make VR accessible, VR that can address these issues. So how do we create a VR experience for someone that can’t see very well in one eye? Or any other disability.
- Data security
- Uncertainty about past and current event;
- Risk of killing serendipity
- Data ownership