Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Virtual Reality and user freedom

[Yui Hirasawa]

>>>> It's another category of hardware if anything. I hope it won't be
>>>> as proprietary and closed down as the smartphone market is
>>>> currently.
>>>
>>> Hardware is not really the issue, in my opinion. The Oculus Rift,
>>> for example, is a relatively simple device. A smartphone can be
>>> based on a free hardware design but it won't matter if most users
>>> run the Facebook app on it (as is the case), and the same applies to
>>> VR peripherals. The problem is what is shown to users, and that's
>>> software.
>>
>> Hardware also means that there will be firmware and drivers. And it's
>> not impossible that those could be subverted to show messages to the
>> subconscious mind.
>>
>>> I am not optimistic about freedom in VR because all the popular
>>> services today are centralized and controlled by for-profit
>>> corporations, and that didn't change when decentralized free
>>> replacement were developed.
>>
>> I'm not optimistic either. It's highly likely that the VR for free
>> software extremists will be just headmounted displays.
>>
>>> Also, self-driving cars, the internet of things and powerful
>>> artificial intelligence are all proprietary, so there are bigger
>>> concerns than VR everybody is ignoring.
>>
>> It's not that people are ignoring them. There are just not enough
>> resources in the movement to fight for these causes.
>>
>>> I personally come from an unpopular perspective in the tech
>>> community, as I am strongly against Virtual Reality in any shape or
>>> form.
>>
>> We all come from an unpopular perspective.
>>
>>> There are simply too negative aspects for it to be ever acceptable
>>> in my view, regardless of its legitimate uses (like assisting
>>> surgeons), but I don't expect many people here to share my concerns
>>> because most of them are moral in nature (for example, I think
>>> letting a serial killer or rapist live out their fantasies in the
>>> virtual world is still wrong, even if it would only involve
>>> AI-controlled characters).
>>
>> I don't see what would be so bad about doing horrible things to an
>> simulation. People do that all the time already, and not just to
>> simulations but also to other people controlling the other virtual
>> character. I would think that letting people act out their fantasies
>> virtually would make them less interested in doing it in real life as
>> long as the virtual reality is sufficiently realistic.
>
> I just want to chime in here that we don't have anything to fear from
> virtual reality. It makes most people feel ill after about ten minutes
> or so.  That is why we just use (bigger flatter) regular screens
> instead for our computing and gaming.  They keep saying VR is in the
> future, but they would have to work around human biology.  I just
> don't think that is going to happen anytime soon.

Please don't top-post and learn to wrap your emails so they are more
readable.

Mutt Quotes[1] has a nice little snippet about why top-posting is bad.

 A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
 Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

Anyways, the reason current VR makes people feel ill is that it's not
advanced enough yet. I doubt that in 5 years more than like 5% of people
feel ill when using VR gear.

[1]: https://dev.mutt.org/trac/wiki/MuttQuotes