From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Sun Oct 13 2002 - 23:45:16 MDT
At 08:09 PM 10/13/02 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
>Russell writes
>
>> I believe most modern "sighted" individuals would situate themselves at the
>> point of their "mind's eye" which, for me, feels about three to six
>> centimeters behind the bridge of my nose....
>
>> What if, by some miracle of modern medicine, my optic nerves might somehow
>> be extended to a length of roughly two meters...
>I think that you have a new take on this old question that
>has not been addressed on this list, or at least not in a
>long time. (And of course, there's really nothing new
>under the sun---in The Mind's I there was a story called
>"Where am I?" and also one in which someone was gradually
>placed at a greater and greater remove from his actual
>body.)
It's not just a story or a thought experiment, it's been the experimental
epistemology of VR for more than a decade. As I put it in THE SPIKE,
drawing on Howard Rheingold's descriptions in his book VIRTUAL REALITY (1991):
< Clad in a sort of wired wet-suit, with stereo visual and auditory
headset, you can dance with a four-meter purple lobster, run through tall
grass as a lion, or transfer your point of view into a robot body on the
far side of the room that gazes back at your own distant flesh. The
experience of disembodiment is so real, as your data-gloved hands control
the robot's movements and your gaze shifts its lens, that it can give you
psychic whiplash. Uncoupling from the VR rig can cause `simulator sickness'. >
Damien Broderick
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