Stepping Into the Metaverse — with Dr. Courtney Cogburn and Prof. Jeremy Bailenson

The next frontier of the internet is the metaverse. That's why
Mark Zuckerberg changed the name of his company from Facebook to
Meta, and just sold $10 billion in corporate bonds to raise money
for metaverse-related projects.


How might we learn from our experience with social media, and
anticipate the harms of the metaverse before they arise? What
would it look like to design a humane metaverse — that respects
our attention, improves our well-being, and strengthens our
democracy?


This week on Your Undivided Attention, we talk with two pioneers
who are thinking critically about the development of the
metaverse. Professor Jeremy Bailenson is the Founding director of
Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, where he studies how
virtual experiences lead to changes in perceptions of self and
others. Dr. Courtney Cogburn is an Associate Professor at
Columbia's School of Social Work, where she examines associations
between racism and stress-related disease. Jeremy and Courtney
collaborated on 1000 Cut Journey, a virtual reality experience
about systemic racism.

CORRECTIONS: 
In the episode, Courtney says that the average US adult
consumes 9 hours of media per day, but the actual number in 2022 is
closer to 13 hours.Finally, Aza mentions the "pockets of 4.6
billion people" — implying that there are 4.6 billion smartphone
users. The global number of social media users is 4.7 billion, and
the number of smartphone users is actually 6.6 billion.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA: 

Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and
What It Can Do


https://www.amazon.com/Experience-Demand-Virtual-Reality-Works/dp/0393253694

Jeremy Bailenson's 2018 book exploring how virtual reality can be
harnessed to improve our everyday lives


Experiencing Racism in VR


https://www.ted.com/talks/courtney_cogburn_experiencing_racism_in_vr_courtney_d_cogburn_phd_tedxrva

Courtney Cogburn's 2017 TEDx talk about how using virtual reality
to help people experience the complexities of racism


Do Artifacts Have Politics?


https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~beki/cs4001/Winner.pdf   

Technology philosopher Langdon Winner’s seminal 1980 article, in
which he writes, "by far the greatest latitude of choice exists
the very first time a particular instrument, system, or technique
is introduced."

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES: 


Do You Want To Become A Vampire? with LA Paul


https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/39-do-you-want-to-become-a-vampire


Pardon the Interruptions with Gloria Mark


https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/7-pardon-the-interruptions


Bonus - What Is Humane Technology?


https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/bonus-what-is-humane-technology


Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for
Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_