So, to get started, I have chosen something I chanced upon in a newspaper. A UK university is celebrating the fact that they are going to be using holograms for lecturers.
Hologram lecturers thrill students at trailblazing UK university
Now, years ago I used to show videos of lectures (on VHS no less) to adult learners in the evenings who were doing part time degrees. The reasoning was simple: to widen participation to students who are unable to attend lectures because of other commitments. Universities themselves see a way to enlarge class sizes, after all, there is no physical restriction on how many students attend a lecture when it is hosted online.
Now, it is commonplace for all lectures to be recorded, for lectures to be uploaded on YouTube, for sites like this to exist.
But is this (and Meta headsets linked to some sort of Second Life) something different? The questions we need to ask are:
- are we “dazzled” by new technology when not much has changed? Is this new technology just a move from cinema to IMAX rather than from the novel to cinema? How would you assess the difference between such changes?
- do we need to be “present” to others to learn? Is there any reason to be embodied? Does being 3D replicate embodiness better than a 2D recorded lecture?
- Can we just have lectures in a virtual shared space like characters in a game?What about NPCs in the classroom?
- Should Einstein present lectures on physics and Monroe star in new films? What would the academic equivalent be?
- what about sincerity, trust? The article ends with “The technology’s AI capabilities mean an avatar can be created resembling anyone in the world, he added, though he noted that this might entail legal complications.” What are these legal issues?
There are many concepts that are changing here. Our idea of space and distance. Our idea of time and routines, presence, absence, but most importantly how we understand ourselves. As students, we understand ourselves as participants in lectures, “being at” a university, all this is changing. As a lecturer I understand myself as doing, not as performing.
All I want are your thoughts below.
Concepts: trust, being-with, space, embodied, virtual, actual.
Whilst the idea of using holograms for teaching might seem dystopian, like we are losing connection to our peers and spending even more time in front of a screen, it could be argued that the employment of holograms in teaching could create more connection for people with disabilities. People with disabilities are often excluded from university, either socially or altogether. Whilst there is no direct discrimination causing this isolation, for some disabled people, the barrier for university comes from the structure of university which is (generally) designed for able bodied people. Take people who are immunocompromised; these people, whilst not specifically excluded from university, risk catching mumps, meningitis, COVID or flu from university, which could be significantly off-putting when considering their options for potential future study. Additionally, those with mobility issues or other physical health problems may struggle to attend university due to needing specialist equipment, or needing to use a large portion of their energy on travel alone. Therefore, whilst hologram teachers may not be the perfect solution, there are significant benefits for disabled students/would-be students which would allow them to participate in the same way as their peers and have a more equal access to education.
Thanks and welcome.
I worry about the disability comment a little. I see in terms of access it makes sense, but it does seem that through holograms they can pretend “Normacy” which is problematic on a few levels. As is often the case, the applied-political advantage rests on an uneasy theoretical basis. Equality of access is good and desirable but as you say it does reduce us all to a sort of Second Life and that brings us back to issues of space and presence.
There is something to be said about a degree of authenticity and accountability to a physical person giving a lecture which a hologram or representation of the real does not really fulfil, especially if it is pre-recorded or AI generated.
Arguably the degree of control over a video/hologram/avatar is greater for the institution hosting them, which again would lose something of that authenticity. That being said, its not like institutions already have that control. They would just have more of it.
When it comes to physical presence, I believe the space for learning exists within the context of other students and social relations therein. One can easily discuss lecture topics while walking out of the building, go up to the lecturer to chat, or anything of that like. Covid showed us that this does not exist in virtual spaces, and there is no obligation or limited opportunity for social interaction. I believe this final point links up to the notion that by trying to bring the first space to second/third spaces, we annihilate all of them into a uniform space where social relations no longer make much sense (this can be understood with the working from home problem that people face).
Thanks and welcome.
So you raise issues with authenticity that requires presence. Those are really nuanced philosophical concepts, but let us say that the relationship with a teacher is one of trust and that being present is required because trust is a social relationship. Authenticity (as in someone selling you soemthing or giving you directions) is a form of sincerity and in need of social relations. But institutions can foster this trust through means other than presence.
Conversely what if the lecturer who is present performs? Is disingenuous for a reason (either profit or pedagogical reasons)? Are they really “there” in the sense you think?
So, we have authneticity, control and space. All important considerations.
I think, and maybe this reveals my cultural milieu speaking for me, that holograms as a technology in general are not that novel. The use of holograms, in music at least, strikes me as something fairly common place, I can think of several famous moments of reviving dead musicians holographically, most notably Tupac (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGbrFmPBV0Y), as occurring during my teenage years, which although not long ago (the 2010s) are still long enough for it to not be novel. As a teen, I was even more interested in the idea of virtual musicians, utilising the holographic performer as either an avatar for anyone (open source vocaloids, like Hatsune Miku) or supergroups and collaborations (the Gorillaz). Likewise, the space of virtual performance, certainly in hyper nerdy spaces, had a real boom in the pandemic years with the emergence of vtubers (https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20181002-the-virtual-vloggers-taking-over-youtube).
So, the idea of engagement with a virtual figure as an entertainer certainly is not new. What then is the decisive element in hologram teaching. The article seems to suggest that it is the addition of AI with “An AI Stephen Hawking” being able to “look like him, sound like him and interact like it was him.” Bracketing my own cynicism about this as a possibility- the article does not explain the mechanisms which allow this absolutely perfect replication and gives no answer to the stochastic parrot critique (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922)- I think the possibility of the imitation of the dead raises troubling questions. Even with hologram Tupac, which was not, to my knowledge, AI Powered, the revival of artists (and hologram simulacrums more broadly) seems to have two problems.
Firstly, what of those who want to make a living as an artist or more modestly a lecturer? It strikes me that if we can perfectly simulate lectures without any human input, then the academic career will go the way of the weavers after the spinning Jenny. Baring my own existential worries about this technology, the more concrete issue is that simulation of a person easily allows for manipulation and endorsement of positions which they would be unwilling to defend. It’s all fine and dandy when this manipulation is done to make Homer sing a song he otherwise wouldn’t (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzqgGlyehLE), but I think the problem becomes especially in academic work the use of holographic doubles to endorse positions the real person wouldn’t. This goes for both the living and the dead and strikes me as particularly interesting in relation to contemporary worries about who has ownership of recorded lectures (https://www.fenews.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/HEPI-Policy-Note-32-IP-and-lecture-materials-1.pdf). My answer sadly leans towards the historically deflationary “same as it ever was,” as one’s excitement for these new technologies is always tempered by the overwhelming evidence that they historically tend to be used to dispossess people.
Thanks, I think you are rigjht about most of this, the novelty itself will soon wear off.
However, a couple of points (and to show my own age),
One, Ronnie James Dio wasb recently resurrected to perform as a hologram as was Peter Cushing in one of the rubbish Star Wars films. The issue here is of ownership — who owns his rights? And gets the profits? Do I now inherit my parents’ images to sell and trade? This will begin to bear on our understanding of property.
Two. education is not entertainment (or is it?) and the use of a specific hologram is a rhetorical device. It is an argument from authority, prevalent in the ancient and midlle ages — Aristotle says X, so X is rationally compelling. This is problematic I feel. It is a question of power.
Finally, I think embodiment and place are underestimated — one can learn only so much from computer games, one must learn through social dialogue and in place. But that is a mere intutition at this point.
Some quick responses to your points.
1. I think you are correct to read this as an issue of property and who gets the right to a persons image. I think in general, I’m sympathetic to an all or nothing approach, either everyone has a right to represent the dead as they see fit or no one does. This is more of a rhetorical position on my part, but I think it helps raise the question about what people wish to use the revived holograms for and what is or isn’t an acceptable usage of them.
This segues nicely into 2. Namely that use of the hologram provides a form of authority. I completely agree that in the context of education it is a question of power. Regarding the legitimacy of the isomorphism I drew between entertainment and education, I think the better way of framing it is that both things have became services. I think anyone wanting to account for contemporary institutions can’t go wrong with thinking how they are framed as a series of competing providers, making a fetishisation of unique selling points like being taught by Cyber-Einstein an almost foregone conclusion.
3. I completely agree that on an intuitive level where learning takes place and how we are situated in it is probably extremely important. I think the difficulty is deciding what is essential and what is merely ornamental when making these arguments about situation. This is of course a deferral of answering the question, but I think it would require a good degree of thinking to come up with a satisfying argument.