Jeffrey Ventrella — in a post entitled Jaron Lanier Yanks my Homunculus — points us to this video in which Lanier discusses Kinect and Somatic Computing:

“At the end he explains how “being” a molecule can help you achieve deep intuition for what it is like to dock with another molecule.”

“Jaron Lanier believes that humans of the future will be truly “multihomuncular”. Why? Because with virtual reality, and new flavors of virtual worlds and augmented reality, we will be able to inhabit avatars that do not necessarily look like us. Jaron’s favorite example is the cuttlefish – a mollusk that is able to animate its skin in order to express itself. But he goes further than this. In virtual reality, you might be able to wiggle your toes to make the clouds move. If you do this kind of thing enough times, your homunculi will start to morph to accommodate this part of the environment as an extension of your body. And as far as the brain is concerned, there is no clear difference between a virtual body and a real one.”

Also see “The Body has a Mind of its Own” (on body mapping).