Title: Against the Instrumentalization of Empathy: Immersive Technologies and Social Change
Abstract: Immersive media has been praised as 'technology for good' in recent years in light of claims for its capacity to elicit empathy from users and even effect social change. These claims assume a shared imagination of how social change works in relation to a particular technological ontology. This chapter examines how emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are participating within this imagination, particularly as extensions of the fantasy of technological efficiency. This examination leads to suggestions for how we might reframe the role for AR and VR in movements for social change. A set of principles are shared for slowing down and complicating the design process, with the aim of producing more impactful and just engagements between designer, technology, and society.