As
most of you probably know, we are moving toward the time when autonomous
vehicles will start filling our roads and highways. But what has not been discussed a lot is that
Intel and Warner Brothers are working on new kinds of “immersive” entertainment
experiences to fill the time of passengers who no longer have to worry about
driving. In an online article on Dec. 2
by Jade Teran for Bleeding Cool: “Warner
Bros. and Intel Want to Turn Your Car into VR Batmobile While You’re Driving”,
there is a discussion of using virtual reality and augmented reality to replace
looking out the windows into external world reality using new fabricated
experiences such as driving through Gotham as if your car was a Batmobile. Of course there will also be options to watch
movies and television programs as well as advertisements – how could we live
without advertisements with all the free time being given to us by autonomous
vehicles?
But
what really concerns me is the need to create artificial immersive
entertainment experiences. This totally
disconnects the former driver/passenger from any observation let alone
participation in the space-time trajectory of the trips that he takes. Driving a car has never been a very effective
way of making organic imprints on a field of experience. It’s too frictionless and too mediated. Unlike riding a horse, a camel or an
elephant.
But
now we are going to have additional frictionlessness and mediation, as a result
of surrendering control of the very process of driving: of guiding and
conducting the car. With immersive
entertainment, a person will have even less experiential traction from driving,
less of an opportunity to make organic imprints from guiding and accelerating
and braking his car.
But
people will be given the illusion of making imprints as they ride around
through the illusory scenery of Gotham in a car that gives the illusion of
being a Batmobile. We can pretend to be
Batman, a superhero who makes and preserves super-organic imprints in the
process of saving the lives of the good people of Gotham. And yet in reality Batman is an imaginary
super-hero, who is making and preserving imaginary super imprints on the field
of experience in which he lives. And to
the extent that passengers in an AV (autonomous vehicle) merge with him, they
are merging with a vacuumous entity that in reality does not support their own
need to make and preserve organic imprints.
Batman puts these passengers into a dream state, an illusory state where
they, on one level, think they are making and preserving super imprints, but,
in reality, they are wasting time that could be spent making and preserving
imprints in external world reality.
The
sensory distortion involved in riding in an AV gets magnified with the addition
of these artificial immersive entertainment experiences. On the one hand, the frictionlessness is
increased, the sense of being in an experiential vacuum increases as a result
of being sensorily separated from the external world. On the other hand, the tension pocket
abrasive friction increases as a result of visualization of being Batman and
riding around having super friction-filled adventures fighting villains and
saving innocent people. It would be hard
to simultaneously experience both understimulation and overstimulation without
completely shutting down. So what’s
likely to happen in an AV with an artificial immersive entertainment experience
like Batman, is that a rider is going to alternate his focus quickly, going
back and forth between vacuum and tension-pocket. This quick sensory alternation is going to
end up leading to sensory disorientation – a total inability for a person to
connect in any way with his physical environment, a withdrawal into himself
that is based both on extreme numbness and extreme burn out. Going back and forth between understimulation
and overstimulation will make each one seem more extreme to the rider.
In
traditional driving, a person is taking control of a situation, is responsible
for a situation. The advocates for AV
say that it will provide a much safer form of transportation, because humans,
after all, make mistakes and cause accidents.
The truth is that we don’t have enough evidence from actual use of AV.s
to say definitively that AV’s are going to be safer. But this brings us to a larger question. Are we going to try and eliminate risk in
every area of our lives? The result of
eliminating all risk would be to create fields of experience that are totally
free of opportunities to make, receive and preserve imprints, totally free of
opportunities to have rich vibrant life experiences and meaningful life
narrative, totally free of opportunities to create a surrogate immortality in
order to prepare for death.
What
is so insidious about artificial immersive entertainment experiences is that by
identifying with the artificial narrative being created, let’s say by pretending
to be Batman in the Batmobile riding through Gotham, a person is given the
illusion of taking risks and by extension of making, receiving and preserving
organic imprints, having rich vibrant life experiences and meaningful life
narratives and preparing for death with a powerful personal surrogate
immortality. But when one is separated
from external world reality through the double layer of mediation of riding in
an AV while immersed in an artificial immersive entertainment experience, the
question is whether or not the person is really fulfilling the requirements for
what constitutes really living.
Once
we effectively separate ourselves from external world reality, and we live in
ongoing sensory distortion, we are constantly trying to balance out our levels
of stimulation. So first, in the name of
safety, we make driving a totally frictionless vacuum experience such that now
we won’t have to participate in driving the car. But then we see ourselves becoming numb from
such understimulation, so we add another level of stimulation that involves the
abrasive kicks of living the life of batman in a Batmobile driving around
taking enormous risks saving other people’s lives. And so we bounce back and forth between
understimulation and overstimulation, trying to operate within levels of
stimulation that we can manage, levels of stimuli that we would be able to
maintain more naturally in a more organic natural living environment.
No comments:
Post a Comment