Black mirror is a British science fiction tv series released in 2011 which was centered around the dark satire of new technologies, and how they will affect our life in every aspect. And each episode has its own cast, story, and time. But let's talk about a specific episode today.
Episode 2 season 1 of black mirror tv series was set in a time when people must cycle on exercise bikes to earn a currency called "merit" and to have power for every machine they're using on the daily basis. But when a person proves he(she) has a talent, they become famous, rich, but more importantly, they break out of this slave-like world around them. And if you want to show your talent, you have to join a talent show called Hot Shot. And if you're talented in judges' eyes, your life will be changed forever.
But let us focus more on something in this episode which is the picture above where animated avatars of people are sitting in the audience seats. But Where are the real people?. So it all boils down to Social virtual reality which was showed in this episode of black mirror season 1 in 2011 and remember this date.
Let us move forward to 2014 when Facebook acquired oculus for $2 billion which was at that time a pioneer in virtual reality industry. It seemed weird then because virtual reality used to isolate you from people around you and make you live in your own isolated world, and that violates Facebook's main slogan which meant to connect people together. But Mark Zuckerberg saw that virtual reality have to connect people together not to isolate them.
Let us move more forward to April 18th,2017 in Facebook developer conference "F8". when Facebook released Facebook Spaces VR application as a Beta version. This app allows you to create and customize a cartoonish avatar of yourself, and by using your VR headset, you can hang out with your friends from any part of the world for a birthday party, for example. You can also create 3-D objects and share it with your friends in Facebook Spaces. You can go anywhere you want while sitting on your chair at your home with anyone in the world, How cool is that?. When you move your head, your hands, or any part of your body, your avatar will do the same exact movement you're doing. you can use a real picture of you and Facebook Spaces will translate it to an avatar looks the same as you. And here's a video demonstrates what "Facebook spaces" is.
Facebook Spaces is just a glimpse of the future of virtual reality, and it paves the way to make virtual reality headsets cheaper and more accessible to the public, maybe in the next decade. So in the next few years, we will see the real life version of the fifteen million merits episode of the British tv series when it comes to Social Virtual Reality. There are around 40 employees in facebook now who are working on social VR, But the more VR headsets are sold to the public, the bigger this team will be.
The Question here is: Will Facebook -by creating social virtual reality world in the future- isolate people more, or connect them more? Will SVR replace the real life interaction between people? Will it replace the touch, the feel, and the emotions?.
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