Virtual Reality: My Personal Opinion

The definition of virtual reality depends on the context. I will define it as a 3D simulation with which we can interact with the help of a computer and virtual reality equipment. Imagine a person in an empty room that doesn´t know anything besides the existence of that same room. That person wouldn´t feel, sad, after all, they know nothing besides the existence that is presented to them, so there’s nothing more to make them feel like their existence could be better. The human in this scenario would have no knowledge, no dreams, no reasons to think, and even though it has the imagination to go beyond what he knows, that won´t stop them from feeling fulfilled. What happens with our universe too, we are bound by unbreakable laws, though, unlike the previous example, V.R. enables our imagination, and expands horizons beyond our universe.

Virtual Reality gives us new universes, new laws, infinite possibilities, and with that comes infinite learning, without the limits of logic. Knowing how Perlin noise is able to simulate random world generation, as we can see on Minecraft (Jon 2015) and other pre-generated games. One day we might even have the process of creating these completely automated, and with that, I defend that reality will be taken over by virtual reality itself. Taking into consideration sensory deprivation tanks which stop us from feeling heat, wind, and have a sense of direction, omnidirectional treadmills, which enables us to run, jump, walk, and never get out of the same place we started on, and the simulation of weight, which is still in the early development stages, V.R. might become as real to us as reality itself, and maybe even surpass it, after all, infinity is bigger than our universe.

In my opinion, V.R. is an ambiguous subject, it can be both interpreted as a bad and good thing depending on which ethical background one comes from. It will completely unbalance our society, because V.R. gives freedom from the laws, be them universal, or the ones we created as a way to stop the chaos. ‘For all of the potentially positive applications of VR, there are also psychological, moral, and social risks associated with this technology’ (Spiegel 2018). There are no consequences in virtual reality because it is that, virtual, nobody gets hurt, and because of that there are no ethics that would be imposed by society. It´s just a game that gives us the impossible and makes it possible, and that´s what I strive for.