Is virtual reality really the next big thing?

If someone would've told me when I was in middle school that before I graduated college we'd be able to experience virtual reality, I probably would have laughed in their face. But now "virtual reality" are the words on everybody's lips since Facebook bought Oculus, the Kickstarter project backed originally by serious gamers. It seems to me like people's general feeling about the deal is either anger that Oculus sold out to the social media giant, or just "why..?"

The answer to the question "why?" is the subject of this TechCrunch article, in which the author strongly defends Facebook's purchase. He describes a world in the not-so-far future in which we'll project versions of ourselves into an alternate universe, socializing with the virtual versions of our friends and family wherever we please. That's where he says Facebook comes in. Virtual reality will go social, and nobody does social better than Facebook.

I'm just not sure I agree with him. Or maybe I just don't like the thought of a future in which virtual reality really is the next big thing. It's obvious that buying Oculus is an attempt by Facebook to stay ahead of the curve by adopting new, disruptive technology. But personally, I have trouble imagining a future in which we're all wearing head goggles pretending like we're basking on the beach with a pina colada. It's way too sci-fi-esque.

When I was younger I was really into the book series "Pendragon." The fourth book in the series is called "The Reality Bug," and it describes a world dominated by "Lifelight," a virtual reality that allows people to escape into their own fantasy worlds. The image of virtual reality I got from this book was a bunch of people asleep in tubes preferring to waste their lives away and exist in their imagined ones. It was kind of sad and a little bit haunting. Nobody saw the point in living their boring, everyday lives anymore, and many people chose to stay in their virtual realities permanently. Sure, a world like that is pretty extreme, but the fact that we even have the technology to make it possible makes me a little uneasy.

We've talked a lot in class about whether our phones and social media prevent us from forming meaningful connections with people in real life. Imagine if we could hang out with our friends in a virtual fantasyland whenever we pleased. What would that do to our friendships in real life? How would our virtual selves compare to our real selves? And what incentive would we have to plan vacations if we could just virtually vacation for free?

We're probably far off from these questions becoming a real concern, if they ever do. I disagree with the TechCrunch writer that VR is on a path to collide with social media. I think VR will continue to be a fringe thing, popular in the world of gamers and computer geeks, while Facebook will continue to dominate the mainstream in its separate sphere. And that's probably for the best. Maybe Zuckerberg knows something I don't, or maybe he was just scared of the possibility that VR could take off while he missed the boat. For Facebook, it doesn't really matter. They've got the money to blow.

adamdorsey.com