How Virtual reality is facing Poverty

Monday, 16 de January de 2023

Virtual reality (VR) is a recent technology that has been rising exponentially. With the advance of computers by Turing and the creation of computer graphics and the head mounted display by Ivan Sutherland, immersive worlds such as VR, Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MX) left the cinematography world and have become a reality. Nowadays those artificial realities are spread around the world and helping humanity in a wide variety of issues.

VR has been used in education to help students better understand the lessons and also to enhance the engagement with abstract concepts. Besides education, VR environments have been used on health care systems to treat patients with phobias and neurological disorders, have been used to train soldiers in harmful places, workers to have better performance, astronauts for space exploration. Most recently a non-governmental organization has found an innovative way for the use of VR technology.

Together with the United Nation (UN) they are using VR to face poverty. The user dive into the life of Sidra, a 21 years old girl that takes the user on a tour into a refugee camp in Syria, where she lives. The VR film that takes people into the life of a young girl in a refugee camp is called “Cloud over Sidra”. The UN has been using this technology to actually make people understand and feel poverty.

This immersive experience has changed the way people think and judge poverty around the world. By making users dive into a realistic world and also be in the place of Sidra, they develop more empathy and can better comprehend the situation. The VR film Cloud over Sidra has been raising more than 3.8 billion to help refugees in Syria.

VR applications to exchange experiences about poverty, racism, sexism, violence or any kind of situation may help the world to enhance behavior and become more HUMANS.

Reference:

[1] Uited Nations Virtual Reality. http://unvr.sdgactioncampaign.org/cloudsoversidra/#.X9vr9zHPzIU

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Autor: Tassia Nunes

#emotionsintogamedesign #neuropolitics #neuroeconomics