Why virtual reality is necessary on a planet of 11 billion | Big Think

Why virtual reality is necessary on a planet of 11 billion
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According to projections shared by the UN, Earth's population is expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050. By the year 2100, that number could increase to 11 billion. Virtual reality will be necessary to reduce the waste of such a large population in industries like transport, retail, and manufacturing.

As an existing technology, there is a lot that virtual reality can do: rich and immersive environments, heightened storytelling, emotionally resonant experiences, and increased productivity in retail. But it's only in its infancy.

As the world's population continues to grow, the technology will need to evolve to facilitate a larger network of users, and developers will have to think harder about the technological potential and the ethical, neurological, and emotional side effects.
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TRANSCRIPT:

"PETER DIAMANDIS: Every year I spend time thinking about what are the technologies going from deceptive to disruptive this year that today's exponential leaders need to be thinking about and actually beginning to work with. And for this coming year, for the next few years my view is that virtual reality is part of that. And it's gotten different terms and there are different elements of it, virtual world, virtual reality, augmented reality. And really the kickoff was the purchase of Oculus Rift by Facebook for a couple of billion dollars. But in addition to that what we've seen is a number of technologies coming together – infinite computing, very cheap high resolution cameras, machine learning capabilities, low latency, high bandwidth networks. All of these things are coming together to reinvent the virtual world experience.

JEREMY BAILENSON: If you think about cars. Forty thousand people died in the United States last year driving, 1.3 million worldwide died in car accidents. Think about the productivity lost by sitting in a box for an hour each way to and from work. Think about the fossil fuel that we're burning while we commute back and forth to work. Think about the road rage. Think about the germs that you get on public transportation. I'm not claiming that we should not see people. I love social connection. What I'm saying is that there's a subset of travel that if you think about it, why do we drive all the way to work so we can sit at a desk and pound on a computer? Maybe we only need to go two days to work. And for those meetings that are not essential we need to put those in VR. We cannot support a planet of 11 billion people which we'll be at quite soon with everybody driving and flying everywhere using fossil fuels it's just not going to happen. So, why don't we have networked meetings yet? And the answer is because there's this secret sauce, this social presence that we have face to face that we don't get with video conference yet and VR isn't there yet. So what we need to do is to be able to track more body movements. The bottleneck is actually not bandwidth because avatar-based communication is cheaper from an bandwidth standpoint than video. The reason is if you're doing an avatar-based communication, all the 3D models for the avatars are stored locally on each machine. What travels over the network is the tracking data. So, locally a camera detects that I smiled and then it sends over network a packet that says smile at 22 percent. And then on the other computer it then draws that smile. So you're not sending visual information over the network. What you're sending is very cheap information which is semantic information about movements. The bottleneck is we can't track movements that accurately so if you think of the commercial systems right now they track what we call 18 degrees of freedom. Your head and both hands. You can do rotation which has three and X, Y and Z which is obviously three. And so you've got 18 points, two hands and a head. In order to have the conversation flow we need to have subtle cheek movements and the twitch of my elbow, everything I do communicates meaning whether I'm doing it intentionally or not.

DIAMANDIS: Imagine a virtual reality experience where when you go into such a reality world everything looks like it's real and you can navigate around it and begin to do extraordinary things in this high fidelity world. At home you will have yourself 3D scanned down to the millimeter. I then enter into a virtual world and I have an AI there that is my shopping advisor. It says Peter...

[thevapingveganbushcraftoff]

11 mins, 11 seconds, 11th of September, 11 Billion people?? 🤔

[supremereader]

If VR was that good would we really need to do much clothes shopping?

[emcwinters_old]

"Cinema is an agent of empathy."

Yeah, I remember when watching "Birth of a Nation", it was like I could really feel what those poor, struggling white supremacists were going through.

Just because a tool has been used for good does not mean it couldn't be used for profound evil.

[DoomRulz]

Flex time and working from home unless there was an absolute need to come into the office should've been implemented eons ago. But nope, managers gotta manage.

[ThroatSore]

Empathy? I hope so. However, when in VR I am safe and consequences to my actions are limited. Some people online do not act well in such circumstances. I hope we can learn greater empathy, however.

[Tooradj]

Just when I tought I don't have enough excuses to isolate, sit on my booty and let the muscle atrophy take its toll, here comes another tech. I wonder if Facebook released Covid 19 for this to take off?

[RetroBreak]

I love VR, it's going to take a lot to make it mainstream though, I don't see the general public being that interested until it's really easy to use and not so much effort to set up and use

[erdwaenor]

This term, "Body Transfer" (about 7:39), most likely deeply relates to certain concepts usually developed in the Arts, Theatre, Dance, Body and Somatics researches; concepts such as (Inter-)Corporeality and Mask, where there are several intra-/inter- subjective interactions generating bodily transfer experiences. Additionally, it might be worthy to note that (deep/true) Empathy also have intrinsic value to this Body Transfer issue. Many technologists (and many other people also), sometimes, really, out of Hope and Atruism, believe in Technology as a/the way to 'Cure' Humanity from its Miseries… which is fine to a certain extend, except that what such people often are Ignorant of, is that it doesn't necessarly take all that kind of technological development or revolution to make it happen. "Body Transfer" —in essence I mean— is as simple as a _GOOD & ARCHAIC_ human and communities' dialectical-affective interaction → Dialogicity is key. We should improve this in ourselves and in Schools for example, so that the new technologists are already well aware that, reinventing the wheel through Technology, although appealing, is most likely not the real game-changer —and even, modern Technology, because of the way it is structured, often incentivize the ideological _Funneling_ of the Human Spirit (instead of the opposite), through technologies and dispositives, which will more likely HIDE than REVEAL, the real Human Super-Power.

[CRobinsonpk]

I really wish people would stop saying the solution to humanities problems is empathy. It’s certainly is a piece of the puzzle. But to emphasize empathy as a main pillar to the solution is short sighted. Empathy, often like other emotions, can be misleading and there is no way to truly equalize your empathy across all levels of experience. What many people really mean is that they just want you to give a crap about what they think you should give a crap about. That’s not equity of empathy, that’s thought control. I certainly see the point in empathizing with people’s experience outside one’s own. But I think enlightenment ideas of personal responsibility, usefulness and the development of the individual are the keystone of a thriving society. Empathy is to be used to morally decide of where to spend your energy. You only have two hands. Develop them, train them; but make rational decisions on where to use there energy. Otherwise you’re just being led by feeling.

[xZeroTheGreat]

We likely peak at 9bln, VR is still coming in big and for good reason. To sum it up: it's safe, it's better version of natural imagination

[saranobutt]

It'll be good if you can make it like the movie Inception.

[virtualknight]

we still need a huge solution for locomotion, widefield of view, accurate fullbody track and affordability

[Pinstripe]

No, we need more Reality and less Virtual "Reality".

[christopherchilton-smith]

10:33 Some of these people have had a little too much of their own Kool-aid 😆
So like I'm all for vr/ar and whatever the acronym is for both simultaneously, love the idea of uploading the brain's information to a quantum computer and Elon Musk's Neuralink, but VR isn't going to save the world, and it may only make it a better place by making life easier or more convenient without ever actually seeing any uptick in empathy, compassion or positive change.

[moseswai-mingwong]

Eye strabismus problems is an unresolved issue with VR few people mention but is very real. After this is resolved, which is a big if, VR will be more practical for long time use.

[TremelJackson]

They should have tested this on someone with racial biases

[ashishtalyan]

Who will do production, for service industry it is ok

[blackf]

Since I was born the population has increased by 4 billion (240%!). I'm all for VR ... if it keeps them all locked in their rooms, away from me and my real wide open spaces ;-)

[databang]

I thought this was about humanity’s biggest problems but then seemingly goes into a Ingsoc brainstorm session in terms of an Orwellian re-education camp. Not that I dislike the notion of VR, but why pretend it could be humanity’s panacea for the greater good of the world, when in reality the technology is made to be self serving and insular.

[human]

Yep going to need a bit more than human ability to keep the coming amount of human population organised