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The Dream of the Disembodied Life

Second Life was not the great success some people had hoped it would be, but things are going to be different eventually. We promises: This fall, a California company called Oculus got funding from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to perfect the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset designed for gaming. As Wired reported this month, […]

Second Life was not the great success some people had hoped it would be, but things are going to be different eventually. We promises:

This fall, a California company called Oculus got funding from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz to perfect the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset designed for gaming. As Wired reported this month, investor Chris Dixon was deeply impressed by the product: “I think I’ve seen five or six computer demos in my life that made me think the world was about to change: Apple II, Netscape, Google, iPhone…then Oculus. It was that kind of amazing.”

Rosedale is also back on the virtual reality scene with the new venture. His company, High Fidelity, wants to build a new avatar world enabled by sensors on phones, computers, and tablets—the goal is to incorporate virtual reality seamlessly into everyday life. His goals go far beyond gaming: He thinks virtual reality technology will eventually become just as ubiquitous as smart phones and laptops.

Why will virtual reality always fail to make our bodies superfluous, and, related to this, why will online education always fail to make face-to-face instruction superfluous? Because of this: “To make virtual reality more real, Rosedale has to have a working theory about what ‘real’ is.” Right, and do you know what’s pretty real? Our bodies. And that’s the one thing virtual reality by definition cannot replicate.

Rosedale: “There is nothing magical about the real world…There is no magical ether. There are no magical particles that enable us to be connected to each other only when we’re face to face.”

But there is something magical about the real world and about the touch, the voice of another human being! Heck, there’s something magical about just sitting in the same room with someone else. Ask any 18 year-old in love. Replicate all the gestures of another person, the tone of voice, the synchronous conversation, and so forth and you still won’t be able to replicate the real feeling of being in the presence of another human being. That’s because being with someone else is a natural and unalterable human need that cannot be completely satisfied in any other way. We are not gods after all.

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