Immersive Illness?

A challenge that concerns me the most is lurking on the horizon, one we don't yet understand the full scope of. As Immersive Education and other forms of personal virtual reality become more realistic and compelling we're going to see "immersive illness" become more common and more difficult to deal with. Although this is an issue today we're somewhat protected by the limitations of today's personal computers and game consoles (they just aren't powerful enough...yet), but in another decade or more it'll be a different story altogether. Nobody knows exactly what impact insanely realistic, media-rich virtual reality will have on society. We're already dealing with early forms of immersive illness, such as addiction, alienation, mental schisms, and more, but today it's not a problem that affects a large percentage of users. We don't see massive problems today for a number of reasons, including rather low-quality virtual environments and limitations on how much time we spend in these environments. But what happens when the visual and audio quality becomes indistinguishable from reality, the technology becomes truly mainstream, and a substantial portion of education takes place in such environments and not in a real classroom? With massive power comes massive problems. Last week I was asked how big this problem will be, and I responded that nobody knows for sure but I'd estimate that the at-risk population can be calculate by adding the percentage of people with addiction problems to the percentage of society that suffer some form of mental illness. That's a big chunk of society. Is it all gloom and doom? Certainly not, but it's a grand challenge we're not even remotely prepared for today. As with other disruptions society will eventually adapt, but I think we're in for a very rough ride.

 

Professor Aaron Walsh from the interview "Virtual reality and higher education: Another perspective" at http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/05/teaching_in_vr_.html

As far as what I understand about the virtual reality is that I think this technology will only improve our life styles in the near future. This not only enhance the visual effects, but also influence user's experiences in virtual taste, sight, smell, sound, and touch.

However, I also think that there could be a problem with addiction if the user gets really deep into playing game just like the game addiction exists in nowadays. Moreover, since the user's experience will become more virtually realistic, it is possible to make user more addicted to it.