When researching the topic of AR/VR, I discovered the history of Virtual Reality can date back to the early 1950s. For decades, the population treated VR much like toys or gizmos. Although, after the criticism for every electronic company to come out with gaming headsets (Sony, HTC, Samsung, etc), it seemed too premature at the time to have this type of technology. I believe this all changed when Facebook bought the startup Oculus VR company in 2014 for $2 billion dollars. This is interesting since Facebook is now known as "Meta", and diving deep into the VR/AR capabilities like never before. Although I believe the new capabilities and tech advancement from VR/AR can be extremely beneficial to many groups and communities creatively and educationally, I can't ignore the pessimist within me. After I had a lovely group speaker in class a few days ago, the only thing I could think of was "Oh my god, the world is going to turn into Wall-E". I also thought that in a world where all people do is stare at their devices all day and are over-consuming and over-sharing online, I couldn't understand why this would be something to desire. However, something I do understand is the complete bliss that is escapism. It's why people read books, watch movies, draw, and play video games. Especially in the social and political climate we're in at the moment, it makes sense as to why we're creating a separate universe/fairytale land to distract ourselves.
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