Digital Sensory-enabling Technologies: A Marketing Perspective

07/28/22 • 55 min

This is episode #22 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 28th of July, 2022.

My guest today is Dr. Carlos Velasco, associate professor in the Department of Marketing, BI Norwegian Business School (Norway), and the co-founded of the Centre for Multisensory Marketing. Carlos received his D.Phil. in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University, after which he worked in a number of postdoctoral and consulting projects in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. His work is situated at the intersection of Psychology, Marketing, and Human–Computer Interaction, and focuses on understanding, and capitalizing on our multisensory experiences and their guiding principles. He wrote the book "Multisensory experiences: Where the senses meet technology" (2020, Oxford University Press). Carlos has worked with a number of companies from around the world on topics such as multisensory experiences, food and drink, branding, and consumer research.
We started the interview with the broad topic of digital sensory-enabling technologies — and elaborated on the belief that, in the future, digital environments will most likely engage more of the senses and become more interconnected with the real world. But this a very challenging problem, and this most likely will involve a wide range of collaborative efforts across many disciplines.

We then moved to the reality-virtuality continuum - a framework for classifying the wide range of immersive technologies available today — and discussed the main factors that drive the degree of immersion and presence in digital spaces.

The second part of the interview covered technology where we focused in particular on how to improve eating experiences in rather specific places, like space. Of course, besides a short debate on the impact technology will have on society in the next 10-20 years, we concluded the show with a dialogue on the ethical implications of such technologies.

Here is the show.
Show Notes:

Digital sensory-enabling technologies
- Are we satisfied with the current immersive digital sensory experiences?
- A wide inter-disciplinary approach to the integration of the different senses that need to be stimulated during digital consumer experiences? And challenges for researchers working at the intersection of these areas
- The reality-virtuality continuum model offers a framework for classifying the wide range of immersive technologies available today
- Individual differences in perception in sensory marketing
- The role does language play in transducing between/ among the various senses
- Eating experiences in space
- The role of technology in the next 10-20 years in reviving the ‘felt consumer experience’
- Ethical implications of digital sensory-enabling technologies

Relevant book:
Velasco, Carlos, and Marianna Obrist. Multisensory experiences: Where the senses meet technology. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Link to Dr. Velasco’s website:

https://carlosvelasco.info/

This is episode #22 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 28th of July, 2022.

Here is the show.
Show Notes:

Relevant book:
Velasco, Carlos, and Marianna Obrist. Multisensory experiences: Where the senses meet technology. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Link to Dr. Velasco’s website:

https://carlosvelasco.info/

Previous Episode

Subjective Experience, Consciousness, and Artificial Intelligence

This is episode #21 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 7th of July, 2022.

My guest today is Dr. Matthias Michel, a philosopher working at the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at the New York University. Although most of his research focuses on the scientific study of consciousness, he is also interested in non-human / animal consciousness. Matthias has also worked in the domain of 'philosophy of measurement' as it applies to the measurement of mental properties, especially in psychiatric research (for instance, in the measurement of fear and anxiety).

We started the show by defining consciousness — discussing the ways in which we can assess our own conscious experience. Since the subjective aspect of consciousness makes its scientific study very challenging, I asked Matthias to summarize for us the current assessment methods used in the field. One such method (the use of subjective reports), although somewhat controversial, proves to be particularly important in applications like mental disorders (specifically, fear and anxiety). Matthias believes that cognitive neuroscience research on consciousness could give us a deeper understanding of mental disorders and their treatments.

The second part of the interview covered technology where we focused in particular on the questions ‘can AI systems be conscious? And, if yes, how?’ Matthias kindly shares with us his field’s perspective as well as his own opinion on the topic.

Here is the show.

Show Notes:
- Defining consciousness; Is human experience always conscious?
- Does being conscious presuppose being aware? (And what kind of awareness is needed here?)
- What makes the scientific study of consciousness challenging?
- Applications: mental disorders (like fear and anxiety): how can the scientific field of consciousness help?
- Subjective reports in the assessment of conscious experience
- Technology: Can AI be conscious? How?

Note:

Relevant papers:

Michel, Matthias. "The Mismeasure of Consciousness: A problem of coordination for the Perceptual Awareness Scale." Philosophy of Science 86.5 (2019): 1239-1249.

Taschereau-Dumouchel, Vincent, et al. "Putting the “mental” back in “mental disorders”: a perspective from research on fear and anxiety." Molecular Psychiatry 27.3 (2022): 1322-1330.

Lau, Hakwan. In Consciousness we Trust: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Subjective Experience. Oxford University Press. 2022.

Link to Dr. Michel’s website:
https://matthias-michel.wixsite.com/michel

Next Episode

Toward a Science of Experience: Excursions in Phenomenology and Immersive Technologies

This is episode #23 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 11th of August, 2022.
Today, I talked with Dr. Camila Valenzuela-Moguillansky. She graduated with a PhD in cognitive sciences from the Université Pièrre et Marie Curie (Paris), a Master in cognitive sciences from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and a degree in biology from the University of Chile. In parallel to her academic training, Camila has a background in bodywork: she has been a dancer and yoga practitioner for more than twenty years, and currently works with touch therapy that brings together elements of the somatic experiencing method and craniosacral therapy. Her research has focused, on the one hand, on the relationship between body awareness and pain, studying the experience of people with fibromyalgia. On the other hand, she works on addressing the methodological, theoretical and epistemological challenges involved in the study of experience from an enactive perspective. She led the EASE network project, an international network of researchers around the development of the enactive approach to the study of human experience and is currently developing the project Multidimensional approach to presence: somatic practices and the study of experience (MAPS). Camila is the director of the Laboratorio de fenomenología Corporal in Chile and of the school A MATHA, escola de tecnologías do corpo in Brazil.
Today’s discussion has focused on the scientific study of experience - which has been (re)considered in cognitive psychology and some other fields somewhat more recently. Western science has focused primarily on a mind-independent, objectivist, third-person perspective, thus, neglecting, for the most part, the importance of first-person experience. However, last few decades have seen a new critical vision of science emerging, one recognizing the role of observer and her embodied experience in the generation of knowledge. Today, Camila gives us a nice incursion into the challenges of first-person research and offers some suggestions for the future.
The second part of the interview covered technology where we focused in particular on its (potential) role in (re)shaping our sensory awareness and reviving our sensorium of lived experience. Here is the show.
Show Notes:
- Lived experience; scientific study of experience (and consciousness)
- Experience from a third-person-, first-person-, or second-person perspective
- Toward a coherent framework of first-person research (Francisco Varela’s proposal)
- Main challenges of fist-person research
- Understanding memory (from a first-person perspective)
- Descriptions of lived, first-person experience (through language)
- The intersubjectivity issue of first-person experience
- The role of technology in the next 10-20 years in reviving the ‘felt experience’

Links to Dr. Valenzuela-Mogullansky’s websites:

www.fenomenologiacorporal.org
www.amatha.org