The air castle of Oculus – A fly in the face of the society

With the Oculus Rift raising the Virtual Reality bar to an all new high, the gaming industry is riding the high waves, with many series like The Evil Within, The Resident Evil and Batman exciting the gamers. In 2011, Palmer Luckey invented the Oculus VR device with the sole aim of adding a different dimension to the way the world views everything.

In 2012, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg bought Palmer’s organization for 2 billion dollars and now the product is under Facebook’s ownership. Luckey donated this money to the nonprofit organization, Nimble America, which is run by Reddit that supports Donald Trump’s candidacy for presidency.

1. Such moves have stirred the political murk in America and have added several points to their negative publicity.
2. Adding to this, Oculus Rift had a delayed release and this ruffled the patience of many gamers and users alike.

Americans have had enough with the damage done. However, more damage followed, this time centred in Tokyo. In Tokyo’s Game Show exhibit, there were scores of people queuing up in front of a display stage that had a mannequin dressed like a nurse and a virtual reality monitor that displayed the animated version of the mannequin.

The point of attraction was the ability of touch the mannequin and the animated version would emote accordingly. The lasciviousness of the whole affair was that, people started to misuse the ability to satisfy their animalistic cravings. Although, the touch sensors were promptly removed after much negative comments from the social media as well as fellow exhibitors, the whole situation was jarring and lecherous, as opposed to the real reason why the exhibit was launched. In an age where many misogynists, murderers and psychopaths freewheel around the world committing crimes, situations caused by technologies such as Virtual Reality, add fuel to the fire.

Virtual world is immersing and has the ability to pull a person’s attention completely in like a vortex, but when it is going to incorporate elements that are provocative and morally incorrect, greater damage to the society’s fabric is done:

1. To think that a person, who spends majority of his time in the VR world, is going to deal with situations and characters that provoke his carnal desires, there is no assurance that these feelings would be carried forward when he is living his everyday’s quota of few hours in the real world, interacting with real people with natural feelings.
2. An impending danger is the power of pull that VR has, on people that will drive them to pursue early retirement in order to completely disappear into the VR world.

What inventors like Palmer should know is, despite his well meant intentions, is to be sensitized to the societal evils that prevail and minimize the effect that his invention will have when used for purposes other than what it was originally designed for.

There is an oft used saying that “every coin has two sides” to refer the boons and banes that comes attached with it. In Oculus, pertaining to the social evils that it is instigating, the VR invention has caused considerable damage to the moral values in a society that is fighting to keep the remnants of what is left of values and respect. Read more insights. Read more articles by doodleblue.