i’m really long on VR cause i think it will eventually provide a stark separation between made-up useful things (like business, money, software engineering, government) and the real stuff (people, body, house, grass, sleep)

made-up sounds dismissive, so call it “abstract”. or “virtual”. the real and virtual mix freely today - travelling to a white collar job is real thing but it’s for the purpose of a virtual thing (accounting job, say). the office building is real, the CEO is abstract

with VR devices, we can put all the virtual stuff in there, so the real world is full of real, primordial stuff. the VR device will be the singular interface between the real and the virtual. it’s a gateway between our physical environment and the abstract aspects of human society

when the immersive VR meetings become as good as meeting at the office, we won’t need most office buildings or the roads to get there. we won’t need physical stores if we can try things on in VR. the physical world will have less infrastructure that’s built to support our shared myths, and more people and plants

even today though, we engage with the virtual world through devices. but devices like phones, laptops and speakers are strewn across our physical environment and there’s way too many of them per person. they also do not provide high fidelity when it comes to many experiences, that we still feel the need to engage in physical spaces to accomplish something in the abstract world

VR platforms are working hard to capture facial expression and gestures with great nuance, because our humanness and its reliable translation into the virtual world is important, even for business and work