Consciousness Festival | Talk on Virtual Reality, Society and Death

This panel brings together three researchers from different fields to discuss the impact of new, disruptive technologies like virtual reality on the social understanding of death. The panel draws from their respective research fields, which includes ethnographic studies of senses of death and the afterlife in Japan, China and the US, clinical psychological research on the use of virtual reality with palliative care patients and the development of VR prototypes for palliative care therapy. This sensitive discussion on a delicate yet powerful topic will address subjects such as the ethical implications of technology use with vulnerable patients, the different cultural perceptions of death and how they will be shaped by technology in the future, as well as the possibilities of virtual technologies for therapy but also memorialization