Often by the time Time magazine gets “all over” a story, it’s kind of already not really news.
Instead Time serves as a confirmation that something is going on which has obvious importance, so we take note they have a recent new issue covering Virtual Reality, albeit more content online than in the paper version. The takeaway is that VR is going to be big, and it’s going to happen soon. This is not the first time we have ever heard that, but maybe this time it’s for real. So to speak.
If we “Understood Media” we might note that our brains are already existing… and operating over many millennia…. virtual reality machines… creating our experiences in real time, or close enough to fool us. Just as 24 frames a second is enough to create the experience of actual moving pictures…but our “reality” as the brain creates it, is much much more complicated.
And just a FYI, the brain is of course the medium through which we will experience any form of reality, whether mediated through VR equipment and software, or not. So, not only do we need to understand the impact of technology that creates media experiences such as print, radio, tv, films…and now YouTube…we also need to understand further extensions such as VR.
Maybe the ultimate virtual reality will arrive when we are capable of “extending the brain’s biology” with chips implanted “on board”.
Two articles below are about current “reality” of VR that works with screens in front of our eyes, and in some cases is a combo with augmented reality where the VR is composited on top of “normal” reality. PSA includes VR in the 7 Core Elements tree as a platform that cloud learner developers will have to address, and it is sure to be disruptive, perhaps on the level of mobile. TBD.
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/11-Things-We-Learned-By-Trying-Every-Virtual-Reality-Headset-Out-There-TIME.pdf”] [gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Why-Virtual-Reality-Is-About-to-Change-the-World-TIME.pdf”]