Mapping the Future of Virtual Reality

This is a good discussion of VR technology, on the Andreesen Horowitz podcast. I recently bumped into a tech founder who swears the transition to full immersion is real and right around the corner technologically.

a16z Podcast: Mapping the Future of Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is coming fast, and everyone seems to assume that it will be gamers who get to have all the fun first. But there are other applications for VR that could also bring it into the mainstream. “It could very well be business users,” says 16z’s Chris Dixon. “It’s anything where you would want time travel or teleportation.”

Dixon is joined on this segment of the podcast by Saku Panditharatne and Kyle Russell, both on the firm’s deal team, to offer their perspective on how virtual reality is likely to enter all of our lives. This year promises to be the moment when more than a very small number of people will get their first taste of VR. What that looks and feels like, and what that shared experience sets in motion on this segment of the a16z podcast.

Exodus to the virtual world

If you have any interest in virtual reality or computer games, I highly recommend this podcast of an interview with Ed Castronova, an economist who studies large-scale online games. He's the author of Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun Is Changing Reality and Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. (There is a transcript of the interview at the first link above, as well as references and discussion; you can also listen to it as a stream if you don't have an ipod.) Castronova blogs here.

I suspect Castronova would agree with me that if AI is eventually successful, then many, perhaps almost all, sentient beings in our future lightcone will be game characters who are themselves unaware that they live in a simulation.