Virtual Isolation

VR. Is this were we are heading?

I imagine a future Friday evening where my wife and I are sitting down in our home, on our couch together, holding hands, headphones on, visors down, immursed elsewhere.

There is something magical just about the thought of having the ability to be transported to a new reality in a matter of seconds with a simple headset. It is a new medium for an old human past time for living in imagination.

It is hard to imagine however, a way to spark the imagination while being so isolating to the physical world.

Such complete captivation can certainly have its advantages. In our society that has so many screens and apps continually vying for our attention, allowing a product to completely cut everything (and everyone) out from around us, this is not the direction that we should be heading.

I have been a strong proponent of Apple Watch for this exact reason; reducing my reliability on my iPhone. It is a product that reduces my screen time and actually encourages me to be more active.

VR and Apple Watch are two very different products in different categories to be sure but they are highlights of a possible new era, our future.

With Google I/O in the books for a few days now and the announcement of Google Daydream there is another company now throwing their hat into the VR ring in a big way. Watching Google’s plans and the potential for VR there is definitely something inside me that gets excited. Indeed, I’ll probably buy one of these.

Having such a “large screen” in such a small package is very appealing. It is the same sort of thing that has brought me to own 4 different pair of over ear headphones, the quest of power in a small package. My headphones sound better than my sound system and likely my Google Daydream will look better than my TV too.

This packaging comes at cost though. The cost is isolation. Sometimes that isolation is actually liberation, like when listening to music. Even when liberating though it is still isolating. However, covering both your eyes and ears is quite a bit different than listening to headphones. The magnitude of isolation is all the greater.

Is my imaginary future where my wife and I sit on the couch together the same future where I come home from work to find a couch of slouchy half zombie children buckled in to their headsets, no longer dreaming of elsewhere but rather virtually escaping there at the drop of a headset?

Imagine a future where you don’t need to imagine a future at all. You’ll just place a helmet on your head and have someone else show you, but just you and only you.

I for one am not looking forward to this generation of VR. What we should all really be looking for is where the technology can lead to, the next iteration of products or perhaps even the next one after that. The learnings now are what will end up most important in VR. How can the benefits of virtual reality be achieved without cutting off all other reality? That is where we need to get to.

Related Tags: Google