Is Virtual Reality the Future?

            As I was reading all this information on virtual reality, it reminded me of a science fiction short story I read in high school (it kills me that I cannot remember the name of it).  The story was set in the future, as are most works of science fiction.  The upper and middle classes of humans have restricted themselves to mechanical cocoons where they virtually live out their lives.  They only know their friends and family through digital avatars and interact with them in a sensory-driven world.   Could this be our future?

            Steps have already been taken towards living in a virtual world, and the majority of them are beneficial.  The PBS documentary Digital Nation showed military personnel who can safely pilot droves from thousands of miles away through extremely dangerous territory (Dretzin 2010).  Another benefit of living in a digital world would be the cut down on travel costs.  Ever want to visit Prague? Now you virtually can!  There are a vast amount of benefits to living in a virtual world, alas with these benefits come drawbacks.

            “Cyber-addicts” is a term for people who have developed a physical need for the sensory stimulation of the Internet.  There are physical consequences to spending copious amounts of time in the digital world.  Eyesight weakens, muscles deteriorate, and joints lose their strength.  But is that all? Thomas Lenzo, a technology consultant, believes that as the quality of virtual reality increases, it will attract more users and the numbers of cyber-addicts will increase (Anderson 2006).  Unfortunately, Robert Shaw, an Internet strategy and policy advisor for the International Telecommunication Union, writes that, “the science of understanding such [Internet] dependencies is not growing as fast as the desire to implement the technologies” (Anderson 2006). 

            Is there a happy medium between fully immersing ourselves in the digital world and retaining our ties with the physical world?  Believe it or not, we are already knee deep in that middle ground.  Second Life is a online virtual world where users can create avatars and explore, be social, and interact with other members of Second Life.   Companies have begun meeting clients and holding conferences on Second Life, a virtual step forward for the business world (Dretzin 2010).  Companies say that it’s very easy to begin to rely on Second Life because it’s much cheaper than paying for travel costs, or even driving to work every day.  However, if we are given the opportunity to be whatever we want to be and do whatever we want to do, will we necessarily take that option?  A study followed a group of people on Second Life for six weeks and found that once participants became established in their social roles, they stayed in more populated areas, but also became more “habitual and sedentary, in addition to their chat frequency declining” (Harris 2009).  In addition to users delving into the digital world, programmers and inventors have tried their best to bring the digital world to the physical world.  An article in the New York Times talks about a mobile phone application where you can take photos of what you are looking at to search it on the Internet (Markoff 2011).

             Virtual reality is a step above the Internet, a mildly explored frontier that should be pioneered with caution.  Like most things I believe there are positive and negative aspects to every situation or choice, whether or not to succumb to the throes of virtual reality is no different.  Virtual reality can be acceptable in moderation but do we really want to sacrifice time in our tangible world to play pretend? 

I don’t.

Sources

Anderson, J. 2006. The Future of the Internet 2: A survey of technology thinkers and stakeholders shows they believe the internet will continue to spread in a “flattening” and improving world.  Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2006/The-Future-of-the-Internet-II.aspx

Dretzin, R. (Producer/Director) & McNally, C. (Co-Producer). (2010). Digital Nation – Life on the Frontier [Video]. United States: PBS. Excerpt retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/ 

Harris, H, Bailenson, J, Nielsen, A, Yee, N. 2009.  Tracking Real Behaviors in Second Life. Virtual Human Interaction Lab. Retrieved from http://vhil.stanford.edu/pubs/?OnlineWorlds=yes

Markoff, J. (2011). Augmented Reality Comes Closer to Reality. New York Times. Retrieved from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/augmented-reality-comes-closer-to-reality/