Critique of Extended Reality Technology

A further criticism of the digital humanities is related to technological concerns.  An example from extended reality (XR), combining virtual reality – computer simulations – with physical, material objects, will be used for illustration.  Extended reality can potentially enrich many digital humanities areas.  To date, arguably its most successful application has been to enhance the study, visualization, teaching, and experience of cultural heritage – specifically, digital heritage.  Extended reality provides an immersive and realistic experience to its users and is therefore a powerful medium for engagement and for providing users with affective and visceral experiences.  Even with the substantial benefits this technology offers, digital humanities researchers maintain that caution must be exercised.  Victoria Szabo of Duke University, a leading scholar in extended reality techniques for cultural heritage, like Koh, points out the different premises on which technology and the humanities are based.  Computational techniques are objective and do tend towards engagement in introspection or self-criticism.  The same immersiveness and realism that convey enrichment may also be in competition with humanistic values, such as ambiguity, uncertainly, and argumentation (Szabo, 2018).  Another criticism is that the utility and efficacy of some of the newer techniques used in digital humanities, extended reality among them, are difficult to assess (Szabo, 2018).

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