Is VR the future of personal computing? - The Drescher Drop - Issue #35
Is VR the future of personal computing? - The Drescher Drop - Issue #35
The Zuck believes the 'metaverse' is the future. I'm not so sure...
Mark Zuckerberg believes the future of computing is the so-called “metaverse,” a digital virtual reality where everyone will socialize, work, and conduct business. He’s gone so far as to change his company’s name from Facebook to Meta, and has invested more into VR technologies than he has social media.
But is the metaverse the future of computing? Are VR headsets here to stay and evolve, like the cell phone, or are they destined for the trash bin of history?
Let’s find out.
What a VR-centric future might look like...
Imagine yourself waking up in the morning and, without changing out of your pyjamas, logging on to work. Okay, that might not be too hard to imagine, given the past two years, but there’s a catch.
For starters, you’re logging into a VR headset, not a laptop. You place the headset over your eyes, plug some earphones in, and you’re instantly whisked away to a virtual office.
You know you’re sitting on your sofa in your living room, but the magic of virtual reality is how it tricks your brain into believing what it sees is real. Within a minute or two, you’ve adapted and you’re fully in work mode now.
You meet Bob and Sue, two coworkers, and chat about the VR special of Survivor last night. You know, the one where you were right there beside the digital Jeff as the contestants sweated it out on an obstacle course?
You’ll be able to open multiple virtual monitors in this workspace. You’ll interface with the metaverse through hand gestures. On-device eye tracking will follow your eyeballs and show you things wherever your look. You may have a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for computer work, or the tech may be advanced enough to replicate virtual peripherals.
And so you’ll work. You can be doing customer service, accounting, ordering, data entry…the list is endless. The metaverse makes it all possible without the need for an office.
The win for employers is they no longer need expensive office real estate, yet they can still have all employees gathered together in an office. Virtual reality, or the “metaverse” changes everything.
Promising, but...
At first glance, this vision sounds a little dystopian, but isn’t office work already dystopian? Cubicles, florescent lighting, low-IQ gossip…
A virtual office may be an improvement, except VR isn’t there yet. Meta’s Oculus Quest headsets have made a promising start. You can pair Bluetooth keyboards and a mouse to the headset and sit at a virtual desk. You can open multiple browser windows while in VR. Signed in to your Google or Microsoft account, you suddenly become a productivity powerhouse.
Meta’s Horizon Workspaces is an okay idea..in principle. But the technology hasn’t kept pace with the vision.
Right now, people’s avatars are extremely cartoony. They don’t even have legs, for crying out loud! Interactions with virtual objects are glitchy.
The entire process of getting a couple of people together in the same virtual room is complicated. Trying to get an entire workforce of hundreds or even thousands together at the same time would require immense amounts of processing power.
Then there are the physical aspects of wearing a big, bulky VR headset for hours at a time. It’s sweaty and heavy and hurts the eyes.
This is only the beginning
Remember the first cell phones? They were massive, ugly contraptions and only a small group of tech geeks and rich corporate types cared about them.
Today, smartphones are sleek and powerful computing devices in nearly every single person’s pocket.
VR headsets are like those early cell phones. It’s brand new technology and it’s only just beginning. Mark Zuckerberg showed off some new Quest models on his Facebook page. Apple is working on an ultra-thin AR/VR headset. Even Google is rumoured to be getting back into the game after abandoning its failed Google Glasses project a few years ago.
What would it take for the metaverse to become the standard workplace? In short, it would take three things:
1) Better and more realistic graphics
2) More efficient processing power
3) Stylish and comfortable headsets
Until those things come together in a perfect trifecta, working in the metaverse will never be mainstream.
Work In Progress
In other news, I’m working on two novels, both part of separate trilogies I have planned.
The first is a historic book about the Battle of Britain. Two half-brothers, one English and one German, meet in the skies over England in deadly combat for the future of the free world.
The other is a futuristic cyberpunk-esque story about a nerdy engineer who buys the world’s most advanced sex robot, only to begin to suspect that the robot may actually be a real woman hiding from some powerful people…
Both stories are coming along nicely, and I write a few chapters for each every week.
Recent articles
I recently started contributing to Digital Trends, one of the top tech sites in North America and Europe. Here are some of the stories I’ve had published with them so far.
Microsoft just turned Edge into a gaming powerhouse | Digital Trends
Microsoft added new features for gamers to its popular Edge browser, including a new gaming feed and cloud gaming.
Microsoft quits its creepy, emotion-reading A.I. | Digital Trends
Microsoft announced it will stop the distribution of its emotion-reading A.I. and heavily restrict its facial recognition software.
Adobe Photoshop may be coming to the web for free | Digital Trends
Adobe plans to offer a free web-based version of its popular Photoshop software to everyone, but right now it’s only available in Canada.
The Paper Laptop could be the e-paper device you didn’t know you needed
The Modos Paper Laptop is part e-paper and part laptop, allowing users a calmer and more humane computing experience, the company says.
Don’t miss out on the other issues by Nathan A. Drescher
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