From Wow! to Whatever

Oculus Rift, Sony’s Project Morpheus and dozens of crowd-funded VR-related projects have spawned a daily avalanche of news stories, opinion pieces and social network posts about virtual reality. As someone who’s been involved in immersive worlds for the past six or seven years, I’m intrigued by the potential of instant deep immersion. On the other hand, my experience has also taught me that every technological advance within a particular medium that begins with a “Wow!” ends up with a “whatever.” 

People watching a Charlie Chaplin feature in the 1920s weren’t any less engaged than the audience I was in last week watching 22 Jump Street. The influence of the movie industry as a whole has been vastly more powerful than any particular movie or technological advance. The impact of an ultimately ubiquitous new technology is more in the service environment it spawns than the raw technology itself. The power of the car to take you from place to place, for instance, is dwarfed by the impact of the highway system, the oil industry and the worldwide economy that is dependent upon automotive transportation.

So when I think about virtual reality powered by VR goggles and new controllers, my excitement isn’t about moving around Second Life or High Fidelity with a heightened level of immersion. Using VR hardware to feel more immersed within a virtual world or MMORPG is simply the launch of a new “Wow! to whatever” cycle. The potential of VR to be world changing is in becoming seamlessly integrated into physical world society and business, through some combination of VR headsets, haptic controllers, sensor fusion, robotics, drones, wearables, implants, holographic projection, AR and AI that create a unified fabric weaving together the physical and the virtual.

Am I convinced this is going to happen in my lifetime? No. But it will be exciting being a part of a medium in its infancy with the potential to be truly world changing. Which is why I broke down and ordered the Oculus DK2 last week. 

I Rift Therefore I Am

A brief discussion about the value of virtual reality. 

My Blog has Been Hijacked

Oh my god, can you believe the pompous pontification that's been published here over the past couple of weeks? Future of virtual words, blah, blah, blah. Analytical history of Second Life, yada, yada, yada. Give me a break. If you haven't noticed, someone's been putting his lame-ass words into my pretty mouth instead of clearly channeling my full frontal Muse-ity. So let me set the record straight.

Only fools, blowhards and analysts claim they can accurately predict the future. And the only thing more pretentious than playing backseat CEO is doing it in retrospect. Botgirl Questi (yeah, I'm driving into the third person with an expired poetic license) is about paying deep attention to the experience of the present, not pretending to see the future. Before we get all hot and bothered with the anticipation of cramming our heads into VR helmets and walking through the 3D Internet of our dreams, maybe we should attend to what our current virtual experience is doing to our lives and minds.

The only value in imagining the future is when it motivates us to act in the present to help create it. Instead of hypothesizing about how Facebook is going to ruin or save Oculus, why not consider how we can better use our virtual lives to positively impact our relationships, jobs and creativity. Instead of agonizing over what the new Linden Lab CEO is going to mean to Second Life, why not scrutinize how we're using it now. Since no one can accurately foresee how the confluence of physical, augmented and virtual reality is going to play out ten years from now, why not make the most of today, chill out, and enjoy the fucking ride.

Exclusive News Report: Oculus Rift RL Announced

A new version of Oculus Rift is in development that will allow avatars to experience the physical world as if they were really there. "Oculus Rift RL will give avatars the chance to leave their overstimulating world of fantasy and see the mundane physical world just as God intended it," said spokesavatar Botgirl Questi. 

The ingenious new product will be made possible by Facebook's pending acquisition of drone maker Titan Aerospace, which will be equipped with holographic projectors to bring avatars to life in the physical world. A final piece of the puzzle was uncovered in a new document leaked by Edward Snowdan, revealing that Facebook will provide the NSA access to its servers in exchange for the use of live NSA satellite and video feeds to complete the hardware and software ecosystem.

  

The new product won't only be marketed to avatars. Humans will also be able to take advantage of the new platform and avoid the hassle of ever getting out of their chairs or leaving their houses. They'll be able to walk virtually down the isles of grocery and department stores and have their items delivered within the hour by their very own drone. They will no longer have to fight the crowds at movies, plays, concerts or sporting events, enjoying them all in the safety and comfort of their pajamas.

"This new initiative can even turn back global warming by slashing the number of vehicles on the street and eliminating the need for most entertainment and business travel," said Questi. "The future is bright, indeed!" 

My Take on the Oculus Rift Acquisition by Facebook

Base image from ThinkStock

I’ve been writing recently about the difference between mediums, platforms and products. What's most interesting to me about Facebook's acquisition of Oculus is that it's probably going to push the 3D virtual reality medium into the mainstream, breaking out of the current niche of research and gaming into the type of ubiquitous presence achieved by mobility.

From a medium perspective, it’s the kind of deal that 3D virtual reality has been waiting for. The $2 billion investment in the Oculus platform by Facebook is only the tip of the iceberg. It will spark even more substantial investment by Facebook, competitors and partners in the hardware, software, servers, infrastructure and standards that will extend just about everything on the web today to 3D accessible interfaces, just as the iPhone recently did for the mobile medium.

Oculus Rift is just one of dozens of VR and AR systems under development, ranging from a soon to be released version by Sony, to crowd-funded versions on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Having the immense reach and wealth of Facebook behind Oculus is certainly a competitive advantage, but I believe the jury is far from out on whether any particular product is going to end up dominating the space. The type of standards that allow controllers and monitors from different companies to interoperate will extend to VR hardware, giving room for innovative companies to compete with early entrants.

Personally, I have reservations about the possibility that the 3D internet will be controlled by a few giant companies like Facebook. As Raph Koster wrote:

It’s time to wake up to the fact that you’re just another avatar in someone else’s MMO. Worse. From where they stand, all-powerful Big Data analysts that they are, you look an awful lot like a bot.

But in another sense, I don't really care what I look like to Facebook. I care about what the medium does for us and how it will transform our lives and culture. And that's anyone's guess. Combined with sensors and wearables creating the rapidly emerging Internet of Things, the coming decade is going to be full of surprises.