The HTC Vive is a virtual reality headset about belief.
It is a consumer facing virtual reality unit that actually launched. Now instead of other people having to explain why VR is so hot, people are seeing what is so damn cool about it and are losing their minds. They get it now, and that is causing all kinds of new situations to pop up.
The conversation has also shifted to A.I. and how far we can take this immersion thing. A lot of you have asked my opinion, and here it is. Meh.
VR and computing in general is still in some kind of weird fugue state. All of the peripherals we currently use to enter the Matrix space are bulky and flawed. All of the programs we use to produce the symbols for visualization aren't far from the stuff Ada Lovelace detailed about a hundred years ago (belated International Women Day shouts to Ada Lovelace. Thank you.).
In comparison to human life software could be characterized as the brain and hardware the body. The body of VR is still not comfortably functional and the brain still behaves like a child. The dystopian idea of the android and cyborg are far off, and if they are going to get all Skynet on us well, that is on us. Our bodies are total bio, we are slave to the whims of our short time on the earth and an earth that wouldn't mind not having us here.
So if we are to survive uploading our history to a machine that takes 1's and 0's and makes them make sense to someone else wouldn't be a bad idea. The only thing I worry about is the soul it couldn't have. We as a human species are a mix-tape. One person begat the next and etc.. until we run out of road. Your ancestors are in you right now, somewhere in your DNA.
The struggle to exist, the rain, the heartache, the feelings and experiences of everyone we were are all baked into a humans code. A program wont have that. They will have images, writing, and mathematical structuring. Not the same. I'm not a religious man per se, but I know there is some secret sauce in us that makes us, closest thing to a belief I have.
Doesn't mean a future version of a program can't manage an approximation of that. Just means we aren't there yet, but also doesn't mean we shouldn't trying. Maybe we aren't feature complete yet (example: A good number of humans still think a persons color matters), or complete enough to make a responsible predecessor in our image. So for people to get super excited about what we are doing now is premature in my opinion, they are just games. But what is happening right now is important, because innovation is an iterative process.
It's cool to be seeing the birth of what will be ubiquitous with the human experience happen in real time. Shit could be worse.
I hope information keeps their heads up. Shouts to the Fable Legend and Carbine teams. Stay up, I'll keep an ear to the ground, and if I run into you at GDC first drinks on me. Also JERBZ.
The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : Kurzweil Not
