Driven to distraction not only by the lockdown, but also by the peculiar success of Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness (Eric V. Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin, 2020), Leshu Torchin offers up an anti-playlist for anyone interested in issues and topics raised by this Netflix phenomenon.
So many have hailed VR as the ultimate ‘empathy machine’ capable of deepening empathy and recognition of another person’s humanity. But what really are we to make of this technology, the capacity for producing or enhancing empathy, and the ethics that attend it? Once we can put aside the all-too-familiar bid to techno-utopianism, what are the possibilities and limits? What are the questions we should be asking?