Chapter 3 Intelligence augmentation: The vision inside virtual reality

The claim that virtual reality may augment human intelligence is based on the increasingly compelling, sensory fidelity of virtual worlds. Computer graphics and kinematics capture more and more of the physical and sensory characteristics of natural environments. Immersive VR simulations increasingly perfect the way the virtual environments respond to user actions: the link of physical movement to sensory feedback increasingly simulates human action in a natural environment. The designers' confidence in the cognitive potency of these environments results—in part from the very experience of the medium—the deep gut level reaction that designers and users feel when immersed in high-end VR systems. This experience suggests to some that VR has crossed a threshold never reached by older media. More than any other medium, virtual reality gives the user a strong sense of "being there" inside the virtual world. The senses are immersed in an illusion. The mind is swathed in a cocoon of its own creation. The word, "presence," has come to mean the perceptual and cognitive sensation of being physically present in a compelling virtual world. This chapter considers the design agenda that motivates VR designers' claims that virtual reality is a cognitive technology. More specifically this chapter discusses the goal of intelligence augmentation that beats in the heart of VR.