michelle-VI_Seaman

Seaman says (p. 227) that "the continuum that bridges distributed bodies with the recombinant communicative and associative functionality of technology is charged with the potential of extending humankind's ability to experience, generate, operate on, store, edit, and disseminate meaningful patterns of experience." Later, he says "extended computational environment enable us to augment the body...enlarging our capacity to produce and experience patterns over time-to come to know" (p. 230). Seaman talks a lot about context and its importance, and the ability of virtual environments to create new contexts. I'm okay with that; what I'm struggling with is how experience generated in technology really constitutes experience. We were talking about VR surgical training in 602 last week, and while it can be good practice to train virtually, it wont guarantee things will go smoothly on a real person. I would prefer to have someone who has operated on real people versus one who had only virtual experience. While I see how technology will clearly become an intergral part of ourselves, I do not know if we are yet comfortable enough to say that true meaning can come from a digital realm.