Virtual Reality Excites me. It Also Scares Me.

Lots of times, I hear that all the good ideas are taken. This is simply not true when we have industries being created right before our eyes. Mixed reality, Artificial Intelligence, Hyperloop (this deserves its own category), robotics, etc are the tip of the iceberg. I read once that the best time to start a company is when a new technology is developed that can be applied to solve a problem that could never have been solved previously.

We are about to embark into a world full of robotic cashiers making our Big Mac’s, Driverless truck drivers roaming the highways of the world, and where commuting to SF from LA is a normal routine. See, I am excited for all of this because its truly innovative and advancing humanity (in my opinion). With that said, there is one industry that has me more excited, yet uneasy and that industry is virtual reality.

VR has been in the limelight ever since Oculus was acquired by Facebook for billions. Since then, it’s been buzzing. You could argue that it’s been buzzing

for 25 years but I believe this is it. I think it’s not going away. I think consumers will adopt the technology over the next five years, buying 360fly’s over gopro’s and buying a holo-lens over sunglassses. The use cases for VR are limitless and I have my own plans for it that will potentially change my life (and maybe yours).

Videogames, real-estate walkthroughs, porn, military simulations, etc. are a few of the use cases for VR and that will all increase. I do have one problem with this though.

Virtual Reality Isn’t Real.

I mean, it kind of is, but it also isn’t. Anytime we have the Vive, Rift, or Carboard on our face, we are blocked from reality and entered into the virtual reality. This isn’t a problem now but what happens if we like the virtual reality a little more than actual reality? Just lost your job? Got dumped? Bored? Before VR, you just had to cope with it by leaning on friends, maybe listening to music, going for a run, or whatever your “out” is.

Well ladies and gentleman, we now live in a world where if we are having a bad day, we can go to a virtual bar, hang out with virtual friends, have virtual sex, and really do whatever the developers/designers create for us. I feel uneasy about it. I tell myself that VR will never hit a critical mass where there are more people in VR than not but then again, look at smartphones.

One could argue we are in a virtual reality already. Take a walk down Palm Walk at Arizona State University on a Tuesday morning. You just see people looking at their screens. Facebook, selfies, or texting, that screen is in front of our eyes more than it ever used to be. VR would simply be rotating the screen and bringing it closer to our eyes. It isn’t that far away which scares me. It also excites me.

Fuck.