VIRTUAL REALITY IS A TOY
It will not become a thing. It will not be universally adopted.
I know I JUST wrote a post explaining how I do not make bold predictions after experiencing the worst prediction ever, and I definitely could be wrong about this. The only thing I can confidently predict is that I personally will never, ever put one on. (But I just don’t think I’m the only one.)
THIS IS NOT A MORAL OBJECTION
Tech companies are not morally neutral. They are low-key wrecking democracy as we know it in their pursuit of profits, but that’s not new. A new fancy headset is not going to make that worse than it already is.
THIS IS A PHYSICAL OBJECTION
The reason I will never put on a helmet is because I would puke my guts out.
Cyber sickness isn’t new. It’s been estimated that at least 10% of your users experience dizziness and nausea in VR. But a new study has shown that is a drastic understatement, and the number is closer to 65%.
Let that sink in. That means 35% enjoy their time on a headset. (That’s a hardcore failing grade…)
WHY DO WE GET MOTION SICKNESS AT ALL?
It’s actually a really fascinating, and complicated question.
How do you know where you are in space?
It’s not like one of your five senses can just announce: this way is up; this way is down; I’m standing still. It’s three different systems in your body carefully talking to each other:
- It’s your formal vestibular system which consists of three little loops in your ears that sit at different angles and tell you when you’re horizontal, vertical, or diagonal (and sitting, standing, etc.)
- It’s also your eyes and what you can see, especially the horizon.
- It’s also your proprioception or the nerves of your body that can sense where you are, particularly in the upper vertebrae in your neck. (Yes, your brain only really cares where it is in space. Below your neck matters, but not nearly as much.)
Your ears, eyes, and body have to agree. When there’s a mismatch, some people get sick.
For me, it runs in the family. At my grandmother’s nursing home, they had a swing outside where you could roll a wheelchair onto one side and sit on the other and rock together. How sweet. My family used to bet that they could put my grandmother on one side and me on the other and see who pukes first. Really, very sweet.
Whether you get sick depends on which system you pay attention to the most.
For people who do not get motion sick, you pay attention to your ears. Your vestibular system is the loudest, so if your eyes don’t agree, you don’t get sick because your internal sense of where you are is stronger.
But for people who pay the most attention to your eyes, the least reliable of the three, you get sick. What you see changes a lot more than your head moves.
Makes sense, all well and good.
BUT WHY ON EARTH DO YOU VOMIT?
Your stomach is not really related to your ears, vertebrae, or eyes. Why does what you eat matter to how steady the ground is? There’s no connection!
I know I’m diving into weird arcane science But I’m telling you this has been happening my entire life from the time I nearly totaled a family car with cheese whiz on a road trip to South Dakota. We all just accept that if things move, some people must void all of the food in their stomachs. What is going on?
There’s new research into that as well. It seems like you get nauseous because when you have been poisoned you feel unsteady.
The vestibular system is really sensitive and is often attacked by poisons and viruses, (which is why the virus that shall not be named that wrecked the last three years can go after the vestibular nerves.)
So the theory is now that if you are unsteady for any reason our DNA has coded that as potential poisoning and just in case, better empty the stomach.
And since we are primates who had nothing to do with the sea for hundreds of thousands of years, we did not get the DNA that said if the ocean is moving, you’re fine.
SO WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE THE HOT NEW TECH?
Remember the metaverse? This is a post about the metaverse…
I’ve been to the metaverse, 20 years ago!
In the 90s, one of those novelty Virtual Reality shops popped up in my hometown for a hot second where you waited in this long line watching people wear a box on their head twice the size of a motorcycle helmet connected with wires out of their brainstems. They swatted at the air before you got to do it too for five minutes.
It was some kind of catching gems game on multiple platforms, but I could not orient at all, and I just remember looking down and laughing that the game had programmed feet and then running and suddenly being at the edge of the platform before almost puking and pulling it off my head.
If this is anywhere close to the introduction 65% of the population has to these devices, they’re going to have a problem.
IT’S NOT JUST NAUSEA, IT’S HOW VULNERABLE IT LEAVES YOU
Our little phones are there whenever we have a breath free, but they don’t cut off our primary sense. For the vast majority of humans, 80% of the information we take in is through our eyes. 50% of our cortex is dedicated to processing it. Our eyes are the main way most humans stay safe.
This means most parents for at least a decade of their kids’ lives can’t use this for very long and lose sight of them, and nobody vulnerable will ever put this on in public.
And sadly, many women, especially, are vulnerable in the metaverse too!
There are already accounts of attacks. Companies already have a dismal record of dealing with harassment, but it’s an order of magnitude worse when you jump from horrible words on a tiny screen to an avatar rubbing up against you. And just where under the law do virtual attacks fall? We are not ready for this.
All of which restricts this to single or childfree people in the 35% of the population who don’t get motion sickness and aren’t worried about real-life or online harassment to use in the privacy of their homes.
Sounds like a toy to me. It’s a cool toy, don’t get me wrong, and I don’t think it’s going away. But it is a toy.