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all kinds to foster muscle memory, simulate difficult scenarios and illustrate hard-tounderstand concepts in a virtual setting, removing all of the danger and most of the cost. For children, learning in a virtual landscape is becoming more and more commonplace, and the classroom becomes a much more exciting place when students can be engaged with augmented and virtual reality. One of the newest commercial enterprises in VR education has been Google Expeditions, “a virtual reality teaching tool that lets you lead or join immersive virtual trips all over the world — get up close with historical landmarks, dive underwater with sharks, even visit outer space! Built for the classroom and small group use, Google Expeditions allows a teacher acting as a “guide” to lead classroom-sized groups of “explorers” through collections of 360° and 3D images while pointing out interesting sights along the way.” A recent study has also highlighted the direct benefits of incorporating simulations and VR into K-12 classrooms, particularly for helping children engage and understand scientific lessons. It details the so-far steady movement of these resources from a “Nice to have” towards a “Can’t do without” for teachers, mirroring what potentially occurred in the years leading up to the fictional setting of A.R.I.F., whereby a simulated tutoring and companion service had developed from what was likely an expensive luxury to a socially supplied need. Indeed, some of the anxieties around the incorporation of A/VR technologies into classroom learning is that lack of equality in access may mean that students of schools with lower budgets or faculty not amenable to new technological trends may be disadvantaged, or that inconsistent access will hamper the efficacy of the technology in itself (like the internet; the fewer people who use it, the less value it has). These are both possible reasons as to why social or educational authorities could choose to distribute these resources across the board, rather than allowing certain families to receive privileged access. Unlikely as government intervention like this might seem, something comparable occurred in 2016, when the UN officially condemned internet access disruption as a human rights violation, prompting some governments to provide all citizens with nationwide free wifi access. There’s no telling which innovation will be the next one deemed necessary for contemporary human lifestyles. Another function of the ARIF technology was to act as an empathetic, reactive social
companion for children to create positive emotional connections with. Certainly, this would increase the programme’s ability to tailor conversation style and educational tutelage for individual children, and would give these children some understanding of body language and emotional expression. Examples such as home-schooled children with few nor no common interactions with children their age, users who experience difficulty in discerning the nuances in real human expressions, or users whose antisocial behaviours require them to be isolated or limited from interactions with other children would benefit hugely from the social aspect of these programmes. Children in more standard upbringings could actively benefit too. While these social benefits look great on paper, there is often thought to be some major trade-off in replacing unfiltered, face-to-face interactions with a simulated or augmented alternative. The increase in technological advancements in entertainment and communication, while finding new ways to connect the world regardless of distance, have run alongside an increasing trend for loneliness, depression, or feelings of isolation, and for increasingly younger demographics. Regarding something like the ARIF, arguments could be made for the fact that interactions with an artificial social partner may on the surface fulfil some inherent need in children for company, but have less intrinsic value and capability for impact than interactions with a thinking, feeling partner. How long did the Tamagotchi satisfy the children of the 1990s until they wanted to trade it up for a hamster or a cockatiel? Were 2000s kids so impressed by Nintendogs that they divested any desire to have a dog of their own? Similarly, Avery’s interactions with her ARIF, as realistic as they might be, had come to mean nothing in the face of an opportunity for non-computerised friendship. Whether the ever-growing complexity of an AI could be grounds to increase their status from “simulation” to “virtual person”, and the ramifications that would have on the value of their interactions, is a different argument for a different day. It is impossible to argue, however, that no social benefit has come to children thanks to these kinds of technologies. Setting aside abilities within A/VR for communication and collaboration across the globe which young people can make use of every day,
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