The Cyborg's Dilemma: Progressive Embodiment in Virtual Environments

Minding the Body, the Primordial Communication Medium Embodiment: The Teleology of Interface Design Embodiment: Thinking through our Technologically Extended Bodies User Embodiment and Three Forms in Which the Body "Feels" Present in the Virtual Environment Presence: Emergence of a Design Goal and Theoretical Problem Being There: The Sense of Physical Presence in Cyberspace Being with another Body: Designing the Illusion of Social Presence Is This Body Really "Me"? Self Presence, Body Schema, Self-consciousness, and Identity The Cyborg's Dilemma Footnotes References About the Author The intrinsic relationship that arises between tools and organs, and one that is to be revealed and emphasized – although it is more one of unconscious discovery than of conscious invention – is that in the tool the human continually produces itself. Since the organ whose utility and power is to be increased is the controlling factor, the appropriate form of a tool can be derived only from that organ. Ernst Kapp, 1877, quoted in [Mitcham, 1994, p. 23] Abstract StudyW Academ Excellen Award Collab-U CMC Play E-Commerce Symposium Net Law InfoSpaces Usenet NetStudy VEs Page 1 of 29 THE CYBORG'S DILEMNA: PROGRESSIVE EMBODIMENT IN VIRTUAL ENVIR...StudyW Academ Excellen Award Collab-U CMC Play E-Commerce Symposium Net Law InfoSpaces Usenet NetStudy VEs Page 1 of 29 THE CYBORG'S DILEMNA: PROGRESSIVE EMBODIMENT IN VIRTUAL ENVIR... 9/11/2005 http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol3/issue2/biocca2.html How does the changing representation of the body in virtual environments affect the mind? This article considers how virtual reality interfaces are evolving to embody the user progressively. The effect of embodiment on the sensation of physical presence, social presence, and self presence in virtual environments is discussed. The effect of avatar representation on body image and body schema distortion is also considered. The paper ends with the introduction of the cyborg's dilemma, a paradoxical situation in which the development of increasingly "natural" and embodied interfaces leads to "unnatural" adaptations or changes in the user. In the progressively tighter coupling of user to interface, the user evolves as a cyborg. Minding the Body, the Primordial Communication Medium In the twentieth century we have made a successful transition from the sooty iron surfaces of the industrial revolution to the liquid smooth surfaces of computer graphics. On our computer monitors we may be just beginning to see a reflective surface that looks increasingly like a mirror. In the virtual world that exists on the other side of the mirror's surface we can just barely make out the form of a body that looks like us, like another self. Like Narcissus looking into the pond, we are captured by the experience of this reflection of our bodies. But that reflected body looks increasingly like a cyborg. [2] This article explores an interesting pattern in media interface development that I will call progressive embodiment. Each progressive step in the development of sensor and display technology moves telecommunication technology towards a tighter coupling of the body to the interface. The body is becoming present in both physical space and cyberspace. The interface is adapting to the body; the body is adapting to the interface [(Biocca & Rolland, in press)]. Why is this occurring? One argument is that attempts to optimize the communication bandwidth of distributed, multi-user virtual environments such as social VRML worlds and collaborative virtual environments drives this steady augmentation of the body and the mind [(see Biocca, 1995)]. It has become a key to future stages of interface development. On the other hand, progressive embodiment may be part of a larger pattern, the cultural evolution of humans and communication artifacts towards a mutual integration and greater "somatic flexibility" [(Bateson, 1972)]. The pattern of progressive embodiment raises some fundamental and interesting questions. In this article we pause to consider these developments. New media like distributed immersive virtual environments sometimes force us to take a closer look at what is fundamental about communication. Inevitably, theorists interested in the fundamentals of communication return in some way or another to a discussion of the body and the mind. At the birth of new media, theories dwell on human factors in communication [(Biocca, 1995)] and are often more psychological than sociological. For example when radio and film appeared, [Arnheim (1957)] and [Munsterberg (1916)] used the perceptual theories of Gestalt psychology to try to make sense of how each medium affected the senses. In the 1960s McLuhan [(1966; McLuhan & McLuhan, 1988)] refocused our attention on media technology when he assembled a controversial psychological theory to examine electronic media and make pronouncements about the consequences of imbalances in the "sensorium." Page 2 of 29 THE CYBORG'S DILEMNA: PROGRESSIVE EMBODIMENT IN VIRTUAL ENVIR... 9/11/2005 http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol3/issue2/biocca2.html Before paper, wires, and silicon, the primordial communication medium is the body. At the center of all communication rests the body, the fleshy gateway to the mind. [Becker & Schoenbach (1989)] argue that "a veritable 'new mass medium' for some experts, has to address new senses of new combinations of senses. It has to use new channels of information" (p. 5). In other words, each new medium must somehow engage the body in a new way. But this leads us to ask, are all the media collectively addressing the body in some systematic way? Are media progressively embodying the user? 1.1 The senses as channels to the mind "Each of us lives within ... the prison of his own brain. Projecting from it are millions of fragile sensory nerve fibers, in groups uniquely adapted to sample the energetic states of the world around us: heat, light, force, and chemical composition. That is all we ever know of it directly; all else is logical inference (1975, p. 131) [(see Sekuler & Blake, 1994 p. 2)]. The senses are the portals to the mind. Sekuler and Blake extend their observation to claim that the senses are "communication channels to reality." Consider for a moment the body as an information acquisition system. As aliens from some distant planet we observe humans and see the body as an array of sensors propelled through space to scan, rub, and grab the environment. In some ways, that is how virtual reality designers see users [(Durlach & Mavor, 1994)]. Many immersive virtual reality designers tend to be implicitly or explicitly Gibsonian: they accept the perspective of the noted perceptual psychologist [J.J. Gibson (1966, 1979)]. Immersive virtual environments are places where vision and the other senses are meant to be active. Users make use of the affordances in the environments from which they perceive the structure of the virtual world in ways similar to the manner they construct the physical world. Through motion and collisions with objects the senses pick up invariances in energy fields flowing over the body's receptors. When we walk or reach for an object in the virtual or physical world, we guide the senses in this exploration of the space in same way that a blind man stretches out a white cane to explore the space while in motion. What we know about the world is embodied, it is constructed from patterns of energy detected by the body. The body is the surface on which all energy fields impinge, on which communication and telecommunication takes form. 1.2 The body as a display device for a mind The body is integrated with the mind as a representational system, or as the neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio, puts it, "a most curious physiological arrangement ... has turned the brain into the body's captive audience" [(Damasio, 1994, p. xv)]. In some ways, the body is a primordial display device, a kind of internal mental simulator. The body is a representational medium for the mind. Some would claim that thought is embodied or modeled by the body. Johnson and Lakoff [(Johnson, 1987; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Lakoff, 1987)] argue against a view of reasoning as manipulation of prepositional representations (the "objectives position"), a tabulation and manipulation of abstract symbols. They might suggest a kind of sensory-based "image schemata" that are critical to instantiating mental transformations associated with metaphor and analogy. In a way virtual environments are objectified metaphors and analogies delivered as sensory patterns instantiating "image schemata." In his book, Decartes' Error, the neuroscientist Damasio explains how the body is used as a means of embodying thought: Page 3 of 29 THE CYBORG'S DILEMNA: PROGRESSIVE EMBODIMENT IN VIRTUAL ENVIR... 9/11/2005 http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol3/issue2/biocca2.html "...the body as represented in the brain, may constitute the indispensable frame of reference for the neural processes that we experience as the mind; that our very organism rather than some absolute experiential reality is used as the ground of reference for the constructions we make of the world around us and for the construction of the ever-present sense of subjectivity that is part and parcel of our experiences; that our most refined thoughts and best actions, our greatest joys and deepest sorrows, use the body as a yardstick" [(Damasio, 1994, p. xvi)]. Damasio's title, Descartes' Error, warns against the misleading tendency to think of the body and mind, reason and emotion, as separate systems. Figure 1. Range of possible input (sensors) and output (effectors) devices for a virtual reality system. Illustrates the pattern of progressive embodiment in virtual reality systems. Source: Biocca & Delaney, 1995 1.3 The body as a communication device The body is also an expressive communication device [(Benthall & Polhemus, 1975)], a social semiotic vehicle for representing mental states (e.g., emotions, observations, plans, etc.)