If anyone is well-placed to forecast how virtual and augmented reality could change our lives, it is arguably Neal Stephenson, the United States author of sci-fi classic Snow Crash.

Stephenson has spent his writing career speculating about technological developments.

But he has another job as "chief futurist" of Google-backed mixed-reality start-up Magic Leap – valued at US$4.5 billion in a funding round.



When it comes to VR and AR, he – perhaps more than anyone – should know what is really in the pipeline.



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VR technology has loomed large in the sci-fi genre for more than 40 years, for example in the form of Star Trek's holodeck, a facility used by the crew of the starship for recreation and training.

SUPPLIED Magic Leap released a "teaser" last year for game it is developing in collaboration with Wellington's Weta Workshop.

But despite big advances, such as the launch of VR headsets Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, reality is still a long way from matching the fantasy.

Is there is a risk that VR/AR will be "imagined out" by the time that consumer devices hit the mainstream, destined to always lag disappointingly behind our fiction-fuelled high expectations?

"I wouldn't be involved in that kind of thing if I believed that was the case," Stephenson says, referring momentarily and obliquely to his role as a futurist rather than author.

That assertion is as much as he will say.

Stephenson is a regular visitor to Wellington – where Magic Leap has a partnership with special effects firm Weta Workshop – and is in the city this week to make an appearance at Future Realities, a VR/AR conference being held under the umbrella of Techweek.

Magic Leap is reported to be developing glasses that will beam animations directly on to people's retinas, so they will appear as lifelike 3-D additions to their "real world" view .

Job ads posted by Weta reveal it is developing a game for Magic Leap that promises to deliver "a robot-disintegrating science fiction experience".

But Stephenson isn't able to discuss his work at what has been described as the world's most secretive start-up.

Do we need yet another form of entertainment and escapism?

"The ones we have now don't appear to be serving us well," he responds.

"We have got into an odd situation where social media turned out to be the most entertaining thing of all. The ability to sit there all day and see what you friends and family are thinking about, turns out to have a compelling and addictive quality to it.

"What we have learnt in dramatic fashion recently is there are ways to hack that, and use it in ways its creators probably weren't thinking of, to sway political systems and to do other malicious things."

He confirms he is talking about the likes of "fake news".

Who is going to get involved in local politics or clean up their local stream, if they can dance with Mr Darcy at virtual-reality regency balls, or walk down the high-street zapping aliens?

VR and AR isn't all about entertainment, Stephenson points out.

"I am sure there will be immersive things that take you 'somewhere else', but AR doesn't really make sense unless it is integrated with what is around you."

He notes the New York Times has been dabbling in VR as a medium to portray the Syrian civil war.

US "transmedia" producer Caitlin Burns, also speaking at Future Realities, said researchers at Oxford University were using VR to help people overcome severe anxiety disorders – placing people who were afraid to leave their homes in "virtual" underground train carriages.

As a writer whose work inspires people to imagine the future, it may seem ironic that it isn't possible for Stephenson to discuss the innovations that he is helping to hatch.

How does the secrecy sits with the fact that people had little if any opportunity to debate the impact of social media algorithms used by the likes Facebook? That is before the unintended consequences which he has just referred to became apparent on society.

It is not a topic Stephenson will discuss on-record.

So for now, his insights may be best gleaned through his fiction.

Snow Crash, which was nominated for the British Science Fiction Award in 1993, envisioned a VR "Metaverse" populated by user-controlled avatars, while his latest book Seveneves chronicles an escape from Earth.

In the works is a book that will concern time travel. I ask a question that a writer-friend has been pondering.

If you were beamed back in time a few hundred years, how could you prove – with what might be to hand – that you came from a technologically vastly more advanced future?

"If you knew how to make lenses, you could say there were little creatures and say 'give me a piece of glass and I'll prove it to you'," Stephenson says. "Lens grinding is probably something you could learn."

It may be the best suggestion we have had so far.

"It's an interesting question," Stephenson says, now in his comfort zone.

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