Rise Of Virtual Reality Essay

The Rise of Virtual Reality

Medani Maneno Mlawa

Writing Centre

University of International Business and Economics

Fall, 2015

Beijing, People’s Republic of ChinaThe Rise of Virtual Reality
Virtual reality also called VR has drawn a lot of attention in the last few years. The rise of VR has brought light to the 21st century. It is an ultimate game changer. I think the discovery of virtual reality technology has brought a new dimension of experiencing things we have been experiencing in the real world. Virtual reality basically involves interacting with the virtual world. Virtual reality technology has grown rapidly because people got interested with interacting with the virtual world. Virtual reality

TV has in the 1960s increased the homicide rate in American society [Kall93]. VR can potentially have the same influence on our society a few years from now. People playing brutal games may identify themselves with the virtual heroes and adopt their violent behaviour. With the improvement of the simulation and visual quality of virtual worlds the differences between reality and VR will be constantly disappearing and consequently people may become confused what is real and what is virtual. In fact this process has already begun: military simulations are becoming so close to reality that soldiers do not know any more whether they are remotely steering a real “death-machine” or just making a training. This may eventually lead to the lack of responsibility for our actions: one can kill cold-blooded thousands of innocent people not knowing (or rather pretending not to know) if taking part in a simulation or a real mission [Smit94].
To understand the importance of VR in our future, we need to think of it not as an industry but as an interface, a new way of interacting with the world. We’ve gone from desktops to mobile computing; the next step-change is VR. It can be hard to see this now: VR is still in its infancy and can be easily dismissed as gimmicky, or just for gamers. However, as the technology scales, the potential of VR is enormous. It could change our economy, our media, and how we live our

“What will happen is for many low-value interactions, VR will replace a lot of those.”[Luckey16]
Some of those “low-value interactions” might be more important to us than we think. But that’s why it’s going to be important to talk a lot about the effect VR has on humans and our social interactions — for better and for worse. There’s plenty to discuss about virtual reality as a technology, but its future will be defined as much by its social benefits and costs. All these questions are intentionally left open. The overwhelming evolution of virtual reality technology indicates that there may be an all to real danger for society. VR may become the ultimate drug for the masses. It is our responsibility to choose the right dose. [Dredge16]REFERENCES
Mazuryk T, Michael Gervautz.(n.d). Virtual Reality History, Applications, Technology and Future.(PDF). Retrieved from https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/1996/mazuryk-1996-VRH/TR-186-2-96-06Paper.pdf
I. Sutherland: The Ultimate Display. Proceedings of IFIP Congress 2, pp. 506-509