14 Potential Futures of Virtual Reality
Here follows a list of foresight ideas describing a potential scenario in the evolution of virtual reality and the relationship among humans and technology. As usual when thinking on the future, one should be provocative. Even what may seem extreme, is really only a reflection of a new reality that may be approaching.
1. Proliferation of VR immersive devices, driven by the need to make the experience more and more realistic, enable movement and advanced real/like interactions in VR environments.
2. Processing power and computing will progressively and exponentially increase, powering up life-life quality VR experiences.
3. The new Internet infrastructure will be made of 3D nodes and domains and based on distributed calculus power and bandwidth reaching to speeds over over 1,000 time the current 4G LTE speeds. The Internet will ubiquitous, everywhere and in any condition.
4. Advances in wearable, implantable and neuro connections and devices will introduce a new breed of VR immersive devices, connecting directly to our neural system.
5. We will create digital bypasses to our virtual entity, our Avatar, bypassing our body senses and connecting our brain directly to our new digital sensors, our Avatar’s senses.
6. Our Avatar will be our digital identity, our unique identity to access every service.
7. Unless major negative planetary scale events occur or any event that would reduce sensibly our population, with the current trends, we will likely live in a hyper-crowded world. Physical space on earth will become more precious than diamonds and reducing the impact of our lives on the planet will be crucial.
8. We will be forced to do less in less space, consuming less resources. This will push to the total virtualization of our activities, from work to our entire lives.
9. Once we will be able to connect our brain directly to the Metaverse, what we will see and feel will be as real as reality. Reality will so become our First Reality, not the only one.
10. Bio technologies will have advanced to the point or being able to preserve a body to extents we can barely imagine.
11. The ability to live our entire lives in parallel virtual realities, the extreme scarcity of space and resources, the exponential growth of global population, will create the conditions for a new form of life for us humans, wich will not depend entirely on our bodies. Our bodies, due to the previous reasons, may well be kept in hibernation or similar — to consume the least possible resources — and have all our existence happen in a virtual environment. It sounds like the Matrix and it is the Matrix in a way, but where we are not slaves of machines, on the contrary we will have completely integrated with machines.
12. Artificial Intelligence will pave the path to what can be defined as collective intelligence and bring us to think and evolve as part of a whole unique super organism.
13. One of the greatest global efforts of human kind is extending life. It is a natural drive for humanity. We will extend our lives through Virtual Reality, creating a world where our minds, and endless forms of new bodies, can live forever.
14. One major disruption can change the scenario described in the above points. Finding new planets to colonize, hence new space for people. This is not only finding alternative or additional earth-like planets, but also having the ability to reach them.
