The Spread Of Virtual Reality In A Brave New World

As we develop ever-closer relationships with technology, a new class of media emerges — ones that situate us in a frameless context: virtual media. Though still in its infancy, the promise of virtual reality is for users to step inside a new world:

“A frame is just a window. All the media that we watch — television, cinema — they're these windows into these other worlds. […] But I don't want you in the frame, […] I want you through the window. I want you on the other side, […] inhabiting the world.” [Milk, 2015] By encasing the head, and removing all other stimuli, virtual reality (VR) is not, like the frame, an extension of the eye, but a replacement for it. The frame limits our focus, but virtual reality broadens it — by removing the limits

In recent decades, these pushes for alternative media and empathetic machines coincide with booming technology industries. As the liberal-leaning technologists gain money and power, they begin to envisage the worlds in which they want to live, and it is only with the bursting of these tech bubbles that these dreams dissolve and fade from the public conscience. Writing about the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, Lister notes:

“It is […] now clear that the enthusiasm for VR was part of the euphoric techno-utopian expectations of the period, and the heady mix of the computer counter-culture and neoliberal Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.” [Lister, 2008] It would be easy to then discount the contemporary advances of virtual reality as yet another bubble eager to burst, but to do so would be to discount entirely the techno-utopian attitude which Lister speaks of. This culture, in spite of its numerous failures, has given rise to technologies such as the graphical user interface; the smartphone and the internet — to dismiss the movement as purely technological idealism is to ignore the advances it has made. In relation to virtual reality, what will determine its staying power is whether the current tech bubble holds strong long enough to see VR pass into the

[…] One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people.” [Zuckerberg, 2014] Facebook’s interest in VR is unsurprising: they are, to many, the epitome of the current tech bubble. However, they are also a bridging point between the tech bubble and the mainstream, so their investment in VR suggests that perhaps we are reaching a point, after several reinventions, at which society has coincided with the technologists in their desire for a frameless, human medium. If VR is to take hold within society, it will likely be through media channels such as film, journalism, or — most likely — video games. Video game culture — by the very nature of games — is more accepting of the novel: games must constantly introduce new gameplay mechanisms so as to remain enjoyable to the user. It is not unreasonable, then, to predict that gamers will more readily adopt virtual reality games than office workers would adopt virtual reality operating systems. Once virtual reality has “proven itself” within narrative media, it will then transition into