During my work on the project it gained a lot of not expected, curious interest from many people somehow in contact with it. The first impressions were always very enthusiastic, but after the people tried the helmet or thought about it for a longer time the negative implications described above came clear. But this started people thinking, talking and exchanging about their views on the topic of deceleration, perception and reality. The comments reached from simple fantasies to complex intellectual thoughts about the implications of perception being subjected under the users control. Also the helmet dramatically visualises what happens when one part of our perception is enhanced: it displaces another part. Another simple example is a pair of binoculars: If you look through it you see things far away you couldn´t see before, but you can´t sense what´s next to you anymore.

Apart from its social and cultural relevance the decelerator helmet raises the general question of how technology will shape our senses in the future. No matter if you think about it in a short-term view (Google Glass) or a more long-range, futuristic one (cybernetic organisms) an increasing influence of technology in our perception is almost inevitable. In the same movement where technology is increasingly dissolving into our everyday surroundings, digital enhancements will come step-by-step closer attached to our body and our perception.

What comes with a technological filtered perception is also the possibility to personalize your perception as you (or someone else) wants it to be. The Decelerator unintentionally explored how far this personalization can go, before you are lost in your own personal reality. You can´t interact with an environment you perceive different than it is. If in the future everybodys perception is filtered through a digital layer that you are not aware of anymore that let you just see what you wants to see, will this lead to an detachment of our global convention of reality and thereby our possibility to interact with it?
What happens when technology will enable us to perceive our environment just as we want to perceive it? And is this good or bad?