Immersed in Virtual Reality
By: Sonia Krivankova
Tags: User Experience, User Experience Design, Gaming, Virtual Reality, Computers

With these improvements in the system, how far do you think VR technologies will go?

Do you think what we see in science fiction films could soon become reality?

In Ready Player One (2018), a film set in the future on Earth, where everyone uses VR technology to escape reality. The characters do not care about the real world as much, just what is going on in the virtual world. Our smartphones already drag us away from reality, so improvements in VR could potentially fully immerse us in a new limitless world.

Robert Nozick, an American philosopher, suggested a thought experiment called the Experience Machine (aka Pleasure Machine) in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. A person has a choice to plug into a simulated reality for two years where they will not know that they are in a simulated reality, but instead living a regular life. The reality that you would be in would be a utopia for you with no stress and you can experience whatever you desire. But remember, while you are in there you are just floating in a tank with electrodes attached to you not actually “living” your life. After two years you have 10 minutes or 10 hours out of the tank to select the experiences of your next two years or even plan out the rest of your life. Nozick suggested this thought experiment because he believed that humans only desire pleasurable experiences and that the opposite does nothing to increase the person’s well being.

However, he also gave three reasons why someone would not want to plug into the machine. Humans like to actually do things, instead of just experiencing them. We also told ourselves that we have to be a certain way in society, and being just a lifeless object floating in a tank would erase your personality. And last, plugging into the machine “limits us to a man-made reality, to a world no deeper or more important than that which people can construct” (Nozick, 1974). So entering the machine would be like suicide.

Would you plug into the Experience Machine?

VR technologies, maybe not AR, can bring us closer to something like the machine. The reason why video games became so popular is because all people, to some degree, are addicted to escapism. We enjoy procrastination because we would rather do anything else but what we have to, there is a certain joy in it. There is so much stress in our lives that to some the Experience Machine doesn’t sound too bad, even though you won’t actually be living your life.

Sources:

Carroll, John M. “2. Human Computer Interaction — Brief Intro.” The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd ed., Interaction Design Foundation, 2018, pp. 1–35.

“Experience Machine.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 11 Oct. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine.

Nozick, Robert. The Experience Machine. rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil3160/Nozick1.pdf.

“Oculus Quest: All-in-One VR Headset.” Oculus, www.oculus.com/quest/.

“Ready Player One.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 28 Mar. 2018, www.imdb.com/title/tt1677720/?ref_=ttmi_tt.

“Robert Nozick.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 14 Nov. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Nozick.