During today’s class with Ingrid, we started a very interesting and I would say existential discussion. In the first part of the class, while seeing the presentation on VR, its prime rules that need to be preserved, and its future, we approached Zenka’s ted talk on “Will virtual and augmented reality move us into the knowledge era?”. I have mixed feelings about what was said and because of m own opinion on that question, I have decided to develop this topic on my blog.
It is quite a bold statement first to assume that VR is going to be element that will move us to the “knowldge era” and secondly it sounds to me like all the knowledge gathered through centuries is disregarded. Honestly, I am quite pessimistic about putting our personal life into virtual reality and basically giving up on our real life and world. Maybe it is so, because my biggest fear, just like presented in the movie by Alex Proyas called: “I, Robot”, is robots will take control over humans and makes us prisoners of our own life. Of course, it doesn’t need to be robots, just like in the movie, but simply technology taking control over us which is happening already. However, right now, in my opinion, it is within safe limits because laptops, phones, cameras, and VR sets for games proved to be very useful and handy in day-to-day life. But the problem is that hunger for more will never stop and the biggest problem of humanity is that we never learn a lesson from history and history likes to repeat itself. It starts with creating games in VR and will end with living our virtual life instead of a real one. We will stop caring for other people and maintaining any social skills. Life will be unbearable and people will choose to live a simpler life in VR than working on one on earth. Another very important aspect that was brought up during our discussion was that we will get so involved in creating a new world that we won’t care and put enough attention into maintaining and saving planet Earth. It won’t be a priority anymore as first of all while maintaining the planet and life that is not perfect, and secondly, even if the planet will be destroyed we have an alternative world created in VR. Of course, VR has positive sides as allowing physically disabled people to live life to the fullest with a body that works perfectly fine in the virtual world. Broadening our knowledge and developing new ways of learning when it comes to medical subjects for instance. But it is important to be moderate and not give up on our real life for sake of a virtual one.