Future history books will note that March 25, 2014, was a bad day for human legs. It was a bad day for the outdoors, a bad day for bicycles and an utterly abysmal day for cafes, bars and other places where people meet in person.
It was the day Facebook - the social media giant that has already digitized a good part of our social interaction - acquired Oculus VR, which sounds like a malevolent, world-destroying Transformer but is actually considerably more frightening.
The 'VR' in the company's name stands for 'virtual reality.' Oculus has been busy working on a gaming device called the Oculus Rift headset, which, according to a blog post by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, puts the user in 'a completely immersive computer-generated environment, like a game or a movie scene or a place far away.'
Let's pause a moment to acknowledge that in any post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie worth its salt, something called 'the Oculus Rift headset' would be the reason for the apocalypse or, at the very least, its pre-apocalypse creation would mark the moment things took a serious turn for the worse.
Back to Mr. Zuckerberg: 'The incredible thing about the technology is that you feel like you're actually present in another place with other people. People who try it say it's different from anything they've ever experienced in their lives.'
I'd like to believe that's because the people who would willingly don an Oculus Rift headset have lives that haven't extended far beyond their parents' living rooms, but I doubt that's the case. Rather, I think the virtual world inside this odd headgear holds some alluring advantages over actual reality, and that's how Facebook plans to slurp us all up and plunk us down like meat sacks on our couches, with little need to ever get up again.
After detailing the device's gaming capabilities, Zuckerberg wrote: 'But this is just the start.' (Cue maniacal laughter and jarring thunderclaps.)
'After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face - just by putting on goggles in your home. ... Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.'
The problem with imagining all those things in real life has always been that achieving them requires getting up and exerting energy. You have to interact with actual humans - and we all know how insufferable they can be - and endure the inconveniences of travel, goal setting and goal realization.
Who has time for that these days?
With Oculus-equipped Facebook, you can have life delivered like a pizza, right to your own personal isolation zone.
While I do find this all mildly terrifying - will we all wind up Oculus-ized out of existence? - I can certainly see the advantages of being not just 'on Facebook' but ' in Facebook.' And I have some plans for the first time I strap on my virtual reality helmet and dive into the digitized world of social media.
First, I'm going to stop at the weapons shop (I assume there will be a weapons shop; this was created by gamers, after all) and buy a big Thor-like hammer to carry around. Then I'm going to stomp off to my friends' Facebook walls and use the hammer to smash the radicchio out of all the stupid pictures of food they've posted.
After that, I'll find all the people who were popular in high school, virtually approach them and laugh in their cyberfaces because they're now bald or overweight or divorced or otherwise worse off than me. I'll also swing around my big food-whackin' hammer, just to show off a little. Suckers.
I'll track down every so-called friend who ever pestered me with a Facebook game invitation and have my killer robot dog (did I mention that I also bought a killer robot dog?) e-pee on their status updates. Then I'll walk past the virtual strip club - again, you know the gamers are putting a strip club in there - and not stop because I promised the virtual version of my wife I wouldn't and her killer robot dog is meaner than mine.
Finally, I'll take off my Oculus Facebook Helmet, look around the living room and see that my real-life kids are yelling at each other and my real-life wife is asking me to clean up the real-life dog puke on the carpet.
Then I'll suddenly remember I forgot to feed my killer robot dog.
Helmet on - problems solved.
Posted by Unknown on Friday, March 28, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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