Points that I took away from the reading (a sort of summary):

• Man understands space through the use of his body. And we make sense of space through a human-centric (upright prone position) way of looking at things.
• Funnily, we understand space by putting ourselves at its center. Further proof humans have always been creatures that place importance on the self. A.K.A, the world revolves around me. (eg. world maps from different countries used to have different centers depending on the map’s country of origin. And as stated in the reading, different countries love to grandstand that the highest peak reside within their borders)

quote from reading:

“Every person is at the center of the world, and cicumambient space is differentiated in accordance with the schema of his body.”

• Interestingly enough, humans also placed connotations to the different directions. “Up” is related to achievement and the holy while “Down” is tied to death and things that squirm. Personally in my religion, “Right” has always been seen as better and cleaner as compared to “Left”. There is even a hierarchy when it comes to the directions, where up,down,front and back seem to have a higher hierarchy than left or right.

Questions:

• if how we perceive space through is very closely tied to the body, what happens when we take that away ? Can we take that away? Is that why we feel so disoriented in dreams ? Especially when we are in a “body” that is not our own ? Can we take away the “body” in VR or give the user a different body ? Can this open up new possibilities for VR ?
•  Can we change the connotations that are tied to the different directions? Does this bias happen to the point where it affects our daily life? What would happen if we mess with it then?

Concluding thoughts:

Well, this reading was a really short reading but it was absolutely enlightening. It’s the kinda reading that points out something that we have always thought of as  insignificant, something that does not warrant a second glance, and just blows the lid off of it. And now we have a treasure trove to unpack.

Thanks for reading and hope you have an absolutely wonderful day !