Another month, another multibillion-dollar Facebook acquisition. This time Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went and splurged $2 billion in cash and shares on Oculus VR, a firm at the bleeding edge of virtual reality technology, a field that would seem to have very little to do with social networking.
Zuckerberg claims the move was because he believes donning visors that allow the user to feel as if they are in immersive 3D worlds will supersede mobiles as the next big thing for social engagement. “This is really a new communication platform,” he wrote in a statement announcing the deal. “By feeling truly present you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.”
Zuckerberg’s stated rationale seems very strategic and forward-thinking, but it still left most people raising a quizzical eyebrow and wondering if he had just made an expensive blunder.
There's nothing terribly new about virtual reality or VR as it's known – indeed, the concept of VR headsets first went mainstream in some very dodgy mid-1990s Hollywood thrillers such as Disclosure and The Lawnmower Man . The technology, needless to say, has been slow to catch up to that initial vision.
However, the headset produced by Facebook’s latest acquisition, the Oculus Rift, represents a breakthrough in VR and is almost unanimously considered a jaw-droppingly impressive piece of technology. Created by the brilliantly named Palmer Luckey, the headset generated a huge amount of anticipation in the gaming community, and raised more than $1 million on crowdfunding site Kickstarter when first announced in 2012.
But up to now VR headsets have been seen as limited to a single large use case – gamers, who are by the very nature of gaming seeking to become absorbed in an immersive visual experience.
For the rest of us VR headsets have only limited appeal. Mobile computing is a revolutionary platform because it inserts technology seamlessly into our daily lives – despite the perception of users glued to their smartphones rather than living in the real world, for most of us the computers in our pockets augment rather than supplant our real lives.
But donning a VR headset is an intentionally isolating experience, requiring users to sensorily remove themselves from the real world – there’s nothing seamless about it.
There is likely to be a bright future for virtual reality technologies in certain use cases, but I’d wager Zuckerberg is very much mistaken if he thinks the majority of people want to so literally lose themselves to technology in such a solipsistic fashion.