The Paradox of Virtual Empathy

Technology and the impossibility of "feeling with"...when there's a machine on the other end.

I taught a course last semester that incorporated a 3-week virtual reality lab into the curriculum. My undergrad students received Meta Quest II VR headsets and immersed themselves in a VR experience of their choice, as long as it met a few criteria: they needed to find it engaging and educational; the experience needed to make implicit claims about the…