Moving Virtual Reality out of its Comfort Zone and Into the African Kalahari Desert Field: Experiences From Technological Co-Exploration With an Indigenous San Community in Namibia

Abstract

Indigenous people (IP) living in remote areas, at the margins of mainstream society, are often the last ones to experience emerging technologies and even less to shape those experiences. It could be argued technology exposure and experience is necessary for IP to gain agency in making informed decisions on the rejection or appropriation of novel technologies. In this paper, VR is introduced to a remote San community within a broader community-based research collaboration considering political and ethical perspectives of technology inclusion. The intent was to familiarise the community with the technology through the development and playthrough of a game, to explore future opportunities for joint co-designs of VR applications, meanwhile gauging the barriers for how VR operates outside of its intended setting. The community members expressed their excitement about the experience and the desire to re-create traditional San games in VR. The paper reflects on the community experiences, the setup and use of VR in remote settings, and the choices made to facilitate the familiarization of emerging technology. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI ; Virtual reality.

Bridging worlds

“…Emerging technologies, such as Augmented and Virtual reality (AR/VR) have gained popularity especially in the cultural heritage sector, with the re-creation of more contextual and immersive experiences to knowledge transfer. In this light we have validated the potential of VR with our collaborators from a San community in Eastern Namibia to tell traditional tales [7]. We have further investigated the implementation of gestures recorded in natural settings for use within VR narratives, thereby preserving an embodied experience of a narrative [1].…”

A Scoping Review of Ethics Across SIGCHI

“…Public installations and displays 8 ambient displays [8,124], installations [15,25,47,89,93,172] Internet of Things (IoT) 7 smart spaces [58,122,138,152], smart TVs [131], educational tools [90], in general [63] Wearables and biosensors 6 biosensing [34,58,78], fashion technologies [159,176], body integration [114] Games 6 playful narratives [87], virtual reality [126], for leisure [147], with cultural references [167], with adult content [119], multiplayer [91] Broadcast media 6 video streaming platforms [42,53,55,143], documentaries [68], news media [91] Data repositories 5 historical archives [97], DNA repositories [7], learning analytics [154], visualisation [32], in general [145] Others 5 shape-changing interfaces [2], end-of-life technologies [19,104], drones [51,145] Table 2: Technology types as the target of ethics discussions.…”

“…Patients/with health conditions 9 neurological illnesses [13,35,57,76], mental health diagnosis [128,135,146], substance addiction [28], cancer [173] Minorities 5 gender and sexual [150], people with specifc communication [94,176] and learning needs [16,143] Women 4 pregnant [12], with impaired hearing [176], in general [58,153] Older adults 4 [1,26,57,76,95,174] Rural populations 3 in Namibia [126], South Africa [19] and Bangladesh [153] Non-human 1 birds [89] Table 3: End-users that have raised design questions and considerations of ethics.…”

“…Questions of justice are also often raised in studies involving temporary workers (for example, Amazon Mechanical Turk workers) [10,82,87,100,103,162]. Ethnographic studies involving rural and indigenous populations also tend to focus on related topics, including the digital divide, power asymmetries and digital imperialism [72,83,126,153]. Issues of social stigma and discrimination are similarly often raised in studies involving individuals with mental illnesses [128,135,146] and sexual minorities [150].…”