Hello, all.
I just saw something pretty incredible.
It's a video. Generally, I don't embed videos unless they are the main content of the post and/or extremely short, because usually they deserve your full attention. This one definitely deserves your full attention. If you haven't already, click the link above, and watch the entire thing, preferably in full screen mode. It'll be worth it.
You're back?
Great.
Pretty cool, right? I wasn't aware these things existed until today. A few minutes ago, actually. I suppose I am behind the times, as it were.
The video reminded me immediately of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, which I finished reading last night. It was a great read, so if you enjoy video games, eighties pop culture, or fast and exciting reads, it's definitely worth a look. Without spoiling anything for those of you who haven't read it, a big feature of the book is the immersive VR widely available to and used by the public, for any and every purpose imaginable (yes, even that one). That video is far cry from what the novel, which takes place a century or so in the future, describes (though in all fairness I view it on my laptop, not on the Oculus Rift which I don't have), but it was kind of mind-blowing. And it's not the first of its kind, either. There's a whole channel devoted to three-hundred-and-sixty degree, VR-compatible vlogs (yes, I found it just after watching ViHart's video linked above). I really can't get over how cool this is.
Of course, it's also a little scary. I have watched my brother, my sister, and myself fall into the grasp of the time-sucky pleasures of TV, the Internet, and video games again and again. What would happen to our rapidly shrinking attention spans if we could project an entire multi-layered world onto our eyelids?
Certainly (and I draw much of my insight from Ernest Cline) more people would retreat into technology more often, and for longer periods of time. There would likely be a rise in hikikomori. An immersive virtual reality such as the one in Cline's futuristic but eerily realistic world could not only divert our attention from the real world, but further spoil and degrade our smartphone-addled attention spans, and increase our hunger for novelty as we built a tolerance.
On the other hand, a (nearly) complete immersion in another reality could result in a stronger focus. With 360-degree photo-realistic sights, sounds, textures, temperatures, and sometimes smells, there might be enough incoming information from a single overall source to satisfy our appetites. The problem with the Internet may be that it is so large, and that from a sensory perspective it is relatively bland and shallow. The rich multi-sensory experience offered by full VR could finally satisfy our hunger for new attractions.
Then again, if a web browser was constantly available within this VR, attention could become even more fragmented. The characters in Cline's book have so much access to information and services while immersed in VR that they might as well be wearing virtual Google Glass.
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Do you have different or unmentioned opinions? Leave them in the comments!
