A New Technology, Virtual Embodiment, Challenges Our Understanding of Who We Are

As soon as virtual reality became workable, in the early nineteen-eighties, researchers imagined creating vivid, detailed, hallucinogenic worlds. In the memoir “Dawn of the New Everything,” the V.R. pioneer Jaron Lanier recalls evangelizing the technology by describing a virtual two-hundred-foot-tall amethyst octopus with an opening in its head; inside would be a furry cave with a bed that hugs you while you sleep. (“Virtual reality tugs at the soul because it answers the cries of childhood,” Lanier writes.)

Later, the “Matrix” movies imagined a virtual world so accurate as to be indistinguishable from real life. Today’s most advanced V.R. video games conjure visually rich space stations (Lone Echo), deserts (Arizona Sunshine), and rock faces (The Climb). The goal is to convince you that you are somewhere else.

Source: newyorker.com