VIRTUAL REALITY
You’ll never make it to Jupiter. You’ll never climb Mount Everest alone, live in ancient Rome, or stroll with dinosaurs. Not in this reality, at least. We’re in the midst of a revolution, one in which technology is on the verge of democratising access to experiences previously considered beyond of reach for the vast majority of people. Virtual reality (VR) software developers will be able to take us on spectacular trips anywhere on or off the globe (or to locations completely imagined) from the comfort of our homes by providing users with vision-enveloping headsets powered by more competent computer processors.
ENHANCED LIVES HROUGH VIRTUAL WORLDS
We’ve already had a peek of the possibilities that virtual reality experiences may bring, with the first generation of virtual reality headsets already in households. Do you want to go shark cage diving? You can do just that using Sony’s PlayStation VR headset. Do you want to travel the world from the comfort of your own
home?Puton Google Cardboard VR to see the world’smost famous places. Would you like to create a digital sculpture while floating through space? Its possible. What about intercontinental meetings conducted through an avatar, a virtual you with all the gestures and body language that we currently perceive in face-to-face interactions? You’ll also be able to create the meeting’s environment — why discuss the month’s sales data in the boardroom when everyone would prefer to do it on a virtual beach? Such liberty has the potential to create entirely new global communities, giving each resident the illusion of actual proximity to their neighbours. Within virtual environments, this will pose crucial problems about identity and the self. What will it mean for human relations when you can programme your virtual-reality avatar to look anyway you want it to – perhaps vastly different from your real-world body? Would it even matter if all aspects of the imagination could be examined at will? How many of the real-world 36
