Published on Feb 6, 2017

Get a life? Soon it will be that simple, says Kevin Kelly. Five years from now, Kelly anticipates that most of us will have a physical reality and a virtual one – and the second will be as social and kinetic as the first. Forget the idea of Virtual Reality making us isolated slugs, he says, you will be challenged and connected. Of course for all the perceptive tricks it will play, it will also play commercial tricks. The price of this novelty is all your data, historical and biometric, and with that will come more advertising than ever. What is the beginning of a new dimension of fun, will be the end of privacy. Kelly’s most recent book is The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/kevin-kell…

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Transcript: I think in five years or so Virtual Reality is going to be a really prominent platform for experiences, for business, for commerce, entertainment, and social. Let me tell you why. So I’ve been trying a lot of the VR gear and the thing about VR is, and the other version of it called MR, mixed reality, which is where you see virtual objects in the real world and VR where you see only the virtual world, both of those operate on a different part of your brain then when you’re watching on a screen.

So a very common demonstration in Virtual Reality is to put on a pair of goggles while you’re in a room and then to drop the virtual floor inside away so that you’re suddenly standing on a cliff and to ask you to walk out on a plank that’s over nothing, maybe it’s kilometers deep. And for most people it’s almost impossible to do. Your knees start shaking, you’re nauseous, even while your brain is telling you hey you’re in the same room I was in a few moments ago. But the VR is working on a lower different part of your brain stem it’s a much more primeval part of it that experiences things. And when you take your Virtual Reality goggles off you remember not having seen something but having experienced it.

Full transcript here

More on The Inevitable below

A New York Times Bestseller

From one of our leading technology thinkers and writers, a guide through the twelve technological imperatives that will shape the next thirty years and transform our lives

Much of what will happen in the next thirty years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives—from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture—can be understood as the result of a few long-term, accelerating forces. Kelly both describes these deep trends—interacting, cognifying, flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, remixing, tracking, and questioning—and demonstrates how they overlap and are codependent on one another. These larger forces will completely revolutionize the way we buy, work, learn, and communicate with each other. By understanding and embracing them, says Kelly, it will be easier for us to remain on top of the coming wave of changes and to arrange our day-to-day relationships with technology in ways that bring forth maximum benefits. Kelly’s bright, hopeful book will be indispensable to anyone who seeks guidance on where their business, industry, or life is heading—what to invent, where to work, in what to invest, how to better reach customers, and what to begin to put into place—as this new world emerges.

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future