Sara Ahmed’s Affective Economies: Rethinking immersion with tech
How can we rethink what makes technologies truly immersive? In Sara Ahmed’s theory of affective economies, emotions aren’t internal experiences but rather “stick” to nodes of people, objects and space.
At a time when much of the public discourse on tech is dominated by generative AI and large language models (LLMs), any VR-related news—be it from Meta, Apple, or even Snapchat—feels like a relic from another age. The metaverse’s once-grand promise to reshape our reality seems distant if not out of touch—Microsoft’s recent withdrawal of its Hololens project feels more telling than Meta’s unveiling of Orion. With Orion, Meta claims it will "bridge the physical and virtual worlds," but as Benedict Evans points out, "though the tech has got better since 2014, the questions haven’t changed: how long until we have something normal people can use, and when we do, will they care?"
Immersive technologies are powerful not because they mimic physical reality, but because they create emotionally engaging experiences that people care about. But how can we make this happen? Instead of viewing virtual worlds as merging or replacing physical ones, we could see current technologies—like LLMs, generative AI, AR, and VR—as nodes of a broader network of digital interactions already embedded into daily life. After all, people start to care about these technologies when they become meaningful, forming part of what sociologist Sara Ahmed calls “affective economies”.
The framework
Sara Ahmed’s theory of affective economies offers a critical lens for understanding how technology fosters emotional connections. Emotions, Ahmed argues, aren’t internal, private experiences; rather, they circulate between and among the nodes of people, objects, and spaces within affective economies. Emotions “stick” to these entities, creating networks of exchange that shape our perceptions and relationships. This circulation of emotions—whether love, empathy, or frustration—creates meaning and connects us to both social and physical environments.
For example, during exam periods, a university campus becomes an affective economy where stress, anxiety, and determination not only circulate among students and faculty, but also the physical objects and spaces. The library, in particular, becomes a node where these emotions intensify and "stick." The sight of students hunched over books, the hushed atmosphere, and the palpable tension in the air all contribute to this emotional network. Even after exams are over, these feelings may linger, affecting how future students experience the individuals and objects in the space. But the emotional network can change during the course of a semester, leaving the objects and the spaces to take on an entirely different meaning.
When applied to the digital realm, Ahmed’s theory helps explain what makes a tech-enabled experience immersive. It’s not the sophistication of the graphics or how “real” a virtual world feels to an individual, but how well the technology fits into and communicates with the nodes of their existing affective economies that span both social and physical environments. In this sense, immersion doesn’t mean being transported into a virtual world but being part of an emotional network in which the user and the technology play integral roles.
Using the framework
Following this definition, immersion can occur at varying levels, often in simple, everyday interactions. Consider reading a text message or an article on your phone. Despite the thin virtual layer of a screen, the experience can be deeply immersive because it connects you emotionally to the content, the context, and the people involved in the exchange. This is an example of a what can be called a physical first affective economy where technology forms one or several few, but powerful, nodes among other non-digital nodes. Similarly, when using generative AI, like ChatGPT, the interaction becomes a node in a broader emotional network—your thoughts, the text being created, and any feedback received from others. In these cases, the technology doesn’t need any form of sophisticated virtuality to be immersive; it creates a meaningful emotional connection by facilitating affective exchanges.
In contrast, Meta’s Horizon Worlds offers a fully immersive virtual environment, a virtual first affective economy where the nodes in the network are primarily virtual. Yet, the platform has struggled to engage users since its launch in 2021. While it provides a rich and navigable world with plenty of nodes for interaction, users often feel emotionally disconnected. The problem isn’t the virtual world itself but the lack of meaningful connections to other nodes, including physical ones eg. objects and spaces—without a shared purpose or sense of community, users remain detached from the affective economy the platform aims to create. In Ahmed’s terms, users struggle to connect their pre-existing nodes within their affective economies to the ones presented in Meta Horizon.
Both physical first and virtual first affective economies can create a deeply immersive, engaging experience for users—when they are enabled to integrate physical and virtual nodes. Yet when disconnected, they risk becoming meaningless to users.
To make technology more emotionally engaging, it needs to connect meaningfully with existing affective economies and their virtual and physical nodes. AR tools, for example, could enhance social gatherings by overlaying shared memories, such as family photos, onto physical spaces like the dining room to relive memories together. Similarly, generative AI could support personal journaling by providing empathetic, personalised responses, making the interaction feel like an emotional exchange rather than a one-way process. This would transform the AI into a companion that connects with users' emotional states, reinforcing the affective bonds between the user and the technology.
In the realm of remote work, VR could be designed to foster emotional connections by simulating shared spaces filled with personalised touches, such as virtual notes or inside jokes between colleagues. This would help create a sense of belonging, making the technology a part of the emotional network that forms around workplace relationships. In each of the examples above, new technologies are not simply digital tools or alternative virtual worlds but meaningful nodes supporting the user in navigating and augmenting the affective economies they are inhabiting.
In today’s evolving tech landscape, the future of immersive technologies doesn’t rest solely on creating hyper-realistic virtual worlds. Instead, true immersion lies in how effectively a technology engages users emotionally, becoming a meaningful node within their affective economies. Immersive technology, then, is not about replicating reality but embedding itself within the emotional networks that already define how users live. When technology connects meaningfully to these networks, it transforms from a digital tool people use into an integral part of their lived experience they actually care about.
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