Virtual Reality

It looks like mind control will soon be here. Instead of control of the masses via the empty headed cell phone, within a few years we may be sucked into the virtual reality world, and it may even replace the real one in which we live. I think it's not a pleasant future world. When the virtual replaces the real, no matter how astounding the VR is, we lose some our humanity to a greater or lesser extent . Reality might eventually be redefined as simply being the electrical signals interpreted by the brain. Well, there may be a good to this for me because as they play in private with their VR, many of those annoying cell phone addicts will disappear from public. But will they become the vegetables of their private virtual reality world?

The future of VR was on display recently at Face book's F8 developers' conference in San Francisco. And all the companies and participants say that costs for VR have dropped dramatically, that VR technology is amazing, and that because of this, VR will soon not only to challenge reality's stranglehold on the way we engage with life, but possibly even eclipse it for sheer thrills.

Ugh! Sadly, I can believe it. Just observing kids who are gaming and the masses playing with their cell phones incessantly, shows me that many humans will gladly trade reality for the virtual. That's because in virtual reality a person will have Superman- like powers, going where he or she wants and accessing information at will. Anddddddddd, like cell phones they will enable the individual to run away from the real world in which he or she feels inadequate.

But virtual reality gaming or virtual sex is different from the current social media people love. Most of the successful tech products of recent years have been “social”. They encourage and enable social interaction in new ways. But VR is almost antisocial.  It causes us to immerse in an alternate world apart from the people around us. Cell phones can make us absorbed with electronics, but we do have some recognition when using them that the real world is along side. But with VR, one surrenders totally to escapism.

So even though a cruder form of virtual reality has been around for decades without much impact on the average person, it is ready now to explode in popularity and use. The reason it will become more common is not only the improved technology of it, but because there's a price point will just keep going down. As it becomes cheaper experts in the field agree that gaming and the adult film industry will be used most with VR. And that will bring in many other VR uses.

It may seem better to many, for example, to use VR to watch a football game than to attend the game live in person. With virtual reality you attend an event, a nd you can choose a variety of locations from which to view it, ranging from the stands to a place closet to the field. The game becomes intimate and the stimulation's of the VR version are constant. 

But can VR also be used for propaganda, social control, even brain washing? For example, programs could be written to allow a man to see the world from "a woman's point of view" or government could inform voters of a position that subliminally changes a view to what the politicians want, not what is true. It's best to consider the negatives of a new technology, but it seems people today are conditioned to embrace whatever is new without judging its overall worth to them. So the coming VR experience may become either a dream come true or the might mare of the ages.