How Virtual Reality is Changing All We Know

Define reality - it’s something that actually exists right? Well, what if you could mimic everything you know and love and exist in it by putting on a pair of goggles? That’s virtual reality.

Stanley G Weinbaum’s 1935 fictional short story “Pygmalion’s Spectacles” begins with the line “But what is reality?” and continues with what was perhaps the first model of virtual reality that was ever written. The main character meets a professor who has invented a pair of goggles which allow someone to be “in the story,” and “speak to the shadows [...] the story is all about you, and you are in it.” Virtual Reality (VR) has been ever changing since this short story and the first “Experience Theatre” which was called the “Sensorama” and was built in 1962.

Since then, VR technology has revolutionised the way we buy, educate, entertain and interact with the world. In architecture, it is used to visualise, on unbuilt buildings, where the sunlight will shine most, whilst motor companies are now able to test their products prior to manufacturing them. VR can be used for the training of professionals without them having to be in the field. For example training doctors and medical staff to perform surgery using VR, which allows them to be in a realistic environment and see how it would really look without their inexperience putting a patient at risk. However, with every new and exciting technology, there are always concerns relating to the health and safety of both individuals and society. Although no official research has been conducted as VR is still a very new technology in the scheme of things, some experts have concerns about an increase in dissociative mental illnesses such as depersonalisation and derealisation. If these do come about as a result of increasing exposure to VR people may start to feel a lack of presence in objective reality, a scary and alien thought. I recently saw a play entitled “Ugly Lies the Bone” at the National Theatre. VR is used as therapy for an injured soldier to escape her painful memories of Afghanistan and reconnect with her family and friends. In fact VR therapy is now one of the primary treatments for PTSD and has been found to be incredibly effective. Due to the constant development of today’s technology, I guarantee that in the time between me writing this now on Wednesday 8 March 2017 at 5:31pm and you reading this article there will be at least one more development within VR and technology as a whole, we just don’t understand or know about it yet. Rebecka P (Upper Sixth)