This is how virtual reality will become part of our life

Virtual reality is not an ephemeral fashion destined to disappear and not even an artificial fire reserved for video game enthusiasts, but yet another technological revolution that will change our way of living and communicating. If Mark Zuckerberg or any other Silicon Valley entrepreneur under 40 were supporting this position, it would be no surprise. The effect that makes these words heard by a sprightly eighty-two-year-old man is different.

Born in 1934, a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca in the state of New York (one of the eight academic institutes that make up the prestigious Ivy League), Donald Greenberg has a rather interesting story to share. And at the View Conference in Turin he tells it with an engaging enthusiasm. The story is that of a young researcher who at the end of the 1960s obtained the opportunity to inaugurate a program of studies in computer graphics. Today it would not be great news, but in 1967 the “computer graphics” is a UFO on which few have the courage to bet. To the point that Greenberg was assigned as an office a closet until then used by the cleaning men of the institute.

“Everyone was asking me what this computer graphics was for,” recalls the American professor. «I always cited the example of Michael Faraday, the English scientist of the nineteenth century: when people told him that his electric dynamo was a useless invention, he replied ‘why, what is a newborn for?’». All technological revolutions seem useless at first, Greenberg explains, giving the examples of the telephone or television (which in 1939 the New York Times called “a toy for millionaires”, taking one of the biggest blunders in its history). Thus, even virtual reality attracts similar reactions: “But she too, like the telephone and television, is here to stay.”

To do so, however, he will have to overcome some major technical obstacles. First of all: the continuous presence of the human being. Unlike any other form of entertainment related to videos, virtual reality directly involves its user: man is always an active, indeed interactive part. In particular, the sense of sight is stimulated in an unprecedented way. And here, according to Greenberg, comes the biggest problem: our still limited knowledge of how the eye works and how the brain processes the information it receives. “Modern virtual reality systems intercept the human gaze from the movement of the head: but that is no longer enough, it is necessary to be able to interact directly with the fovea (the region of maximum visual acuity of the retina)”.

The list of other steps still to be taken is very long. Some are psychological in nature (“you have to find a way to use transparent lenses, which do not completely isolate you from the surrounding world”; for Greenberg virtual reality will go hand in hand with augmented reality), others concern industrial aspects: from the need for massive funding (“But today there is no shortage of those: let’s think of the money that Google, Microsoft and Facebook are investing”) to that of an ever greater processing and connection capacity (” Moore’s law it is my eleventh commandment: I believe it will also apply in the next few years, using optical technologies “). But the final result is beyond question: «virtual reality will enter our lives and it will certainly not be limited to some games in which you shoot monsters. It will radically influence sectors ranging from neuroscience to education 

 

by Abdullah Sam
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