It can be argued that Virtual Reality corrupts, and absolute reality corrupts absolutely, whenever the constraints and limitations of its construction are preordained, predefined, or preset. By absolute reality I mean an ideologically defined and ordered description of the universe whose co-ordinates are enforced by the dogma of state, church or commercial institutions of power.
Software is never innocent, programmes are never value-free.
In the case of VR technology, our childish fascination with the theatre of the virtual has obscured its true destiny. This lies in its potential role as a cultural phase space, a testbed for all those ideas, structures and behaviours which can emerge from our new relationship to the post-biological world. Instead, all too frequently, VR is contained within a boxed-in renaissance space, surrounding us with simulations of a world view long past its sell by date. Rather than offering us an interactive space opening onto truly new worlds, it entombs us in an architecture of banality. It's as if the screens of the headmounted display could never be more than a rear-view mirror and that the data glove must necessarily be leashed to history rather than pointing to the future.