- Is virtual reality/augmented reality positive for humans?
- This question has been weighing quite heavily on my brain for the past few years, and I believe it is one of the most relevant topics in our modern world. With the rapid development of new technologies, considerable jumps in what we can do in a virtual space happen practically every day. We have seen it with the massive increase in demand for VR and AR headsets, as well as the controversial launch of Mark Zuckerberg’s “Metaverse” and other virtual spaces. These areas, which contain no actual connections to the real world, provide users with a separate existence, one where they can be what they want when they want. Without having to leave their homes, users can interact with others and participate in a variety of experiences that they might have never been able to in the real world. However, even though everything in a virtual world is simply a few dozen lines of code, virtual real estate has somehow become quite a large and profitable business sector. The most expensive of these purchases occurred in 2022, when Curzio Research bought 19 commercial real estate properties in a virtual world called “TCG World”, paying 5,000,000 USD. Isn’t that insane?! Even in a virtual space, humans have still found a way to be greedy. On top of all these bizarre events, there is still the question of whether the advancement of VR and AR technologies will damage humans. As incredibly social animals, humans are meant to leave their houses and interact with the world and with other humans, forming bonds in person. If humans begin to spend considerable amounts of time in what are essentially virtual fantasies, will we lose what unique spirit we once had? Will we become fat and lazy, and start to lose the capability to tell the real and virtual world apart?
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Hello Victor!
I am very interested in your topic and the points you touched on about VR and AR technologies, Virtual real estate, and the Metaverse. You are absolutely correct on your hypothesis about the future of humans and how one day we may not know how to tell the virtual world apart from the real world. Some tips that I have for your upcoming posts would be to go into greater detail about the types of virtual real estate that are out there and what each of them represent. This is strongly due to my lack of understanding on this matter and the fact that the concept of people spending money on non-tangible things, especially through a game-like software is something that I cannot fathom. I am excited to learn more about this subject in your upcoming posts!
https://influencermarketinghub.com/metaverse-virtual-real-estate/
https://www.iberdrola.com/innovation/virtual-reality
https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/future-of-virtual-reality/
Thank you so much for the comment Ava! It’s great to see that others are also interested in such a timely topic. I completely agree with your opinion on virtual real estate. When there are people and companies buying fake, digital real estate, sometimes even for more than the price of real buildings, it starts to get ridiculous. I will likely return to this topic a couple times throughout my inquiry project, so stay tuned!