Experiencing the More-than-Human Through Human Augmentation
Botao 'Amber' Hu, Danlin Huang
arXiv Preprint Archive November 16, 2025 preprint
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Cs.hc |
| Key points | Proposes that repurposing human augmentation technologies to modulate the human sensorium can approximate nonhuman sensory experiences, thereby cultivating ecological awareness, empathy, and care across species boundaries. |
Abstract
The recent more-than-human turn in design calls for attentiveness to nonhuman beings. Yet -- as Thomas Nagel's famous ``What is it like to be a bat?'' thought experiment highlights -- human experience is constrained by our own sensorium and an irreducible gap in phenomenal access to nonhuman \emph{Umwelten}. Grounded in eco-phenomenology and eco-somatics, this paper proposes \textbf{Experiencing the More-than-Human through Human Augmentation} (MtHtHA, or ``>HtH+''), a design approach that repurposes human augmentation technologies -- typically aimed at enhancing human capabilities for human optimization -- to create temporary, embodied, first-person experiences that modulate the human sensorium to approximate nonhuman sensory experiences, cultivating ecological awareness, empathy, and care across species boundaries. We articulate seven design principles, report five design cases -- EchoVision (bat-like echolocation), FeltSight (star-nosed-mole tactile navigation), FungiSync (fungal network attunement), TentacUs (octopus-like distributed agency), and City of Sparkles (urban data from an AI's perspective) -- and discuss implications for more-than-human aesthetics and design practice.