“This technology is going to revolutionize the way we live, learn, work, and play.”
Palmer Luckey’s rhetoric is evangelical, persuasive, and also somehow familiar. His ardent belief that virtual reality headsets are set to alter humanity’s technological horizons is reminiscent of 1990s, when the film Lawnmower Man painted in somewhat crude pixels a vision of the future in which virtual reality (VR) dominated life. The vision quickly disappeared, not only from our movie screens but also from our cultural understanding of where technology might be taking us. Although for a few short moments our world seemed poised to retreat into the dark realms of possibility inside a helmet lined with tiny screens, soon enough that came to be seen as little more than the stuff of science fiction, like flying cars and ubiquitous jetpacks.
But this time, according to Luckey, designer of the forthcoming virtual reality headset Oculus Rift, we’re ready. The 20-year-old, who gathered the world’s largest collection of head-mounted displays (HMDs) when he worked as an HMD designer at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies, speaks in an endless stream of quotable sound bites. Here’s one: “This is not just a new medium—in many ways, it is the ultimate medium.” And another: “It is only a matter of time until VR becomes ubiquitous.”
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