Economic Implications of Virtual Reality
Originally Published: 23/December/2016
With the Virtual Reality industry in its infancy, once it takes root into everyday society and beings to grow it will eventually branch into many, already well-established, fields or it will help in the creation of new industries. This can open up new routes for education, ways of thinking, reinforcement of industry, or updating industries that are not adapting to the rapid movement of the tides of society flowing towards a world being more rooted in technology.
Some of the industries that will be touched upon will include; gaming, health education, education in a primary and secondary sense, sport participation and viewing, mechanised warfare, and exploration of the uncharted deep sea and final frontier of extra-terrestrial space. The following paragraphs will expand on some of the industries outlined above in a bit more detail.
Gaming
This is the medium by which the VR revolution will platform itself on before allowing it to develop beyond the realm of games. Once VR technology has been fine tuned to its capacity in this field the realms of augmented game space and reality will be the next port of call to be improved upon. Sticking with the gaming side of things, VR will see new perspectives open up by allowing yourself immerse into the story of a game, it will open up a new avenue to observe a complete experience in storytelling that has never been used until now. From an epic space adventure, to being part of an historical event, or to be in a world created from scratch from the mind like Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings universe, VR will be initially, for want of a better word, perfected through games.
Health
The use of VR will have a big impact in the field of health as it can be used in observing the individuals body and assess the problems in the afflicted areas. Wireless connection with a spherical nano-camera with a full orbital scope can be inserted into the body and possibly moved through magnetic field propulsion technology, that has probably been built into a doctors table, to give a complete around the body access to these afflicted areas, and allow the doctor to view the internal workings and failures of the body to prescribe an accurate diagnosis of an ailment.
Health Education
A database of the body and its workings can be used for medical students to view parts of the body in their healthy states and deteriorated states. They can also use a magnified view of the chemical and biological mechanics (like neural network workings, DNA and RNA copying, enzyme usage of the before/substrate and after/products of their catalysed reactions, etc.) within the body that allow it achieve homeostasis. This would revolutionize medicinal education and allow a more complete training of prospecting medical staff.
Sport
The use in traditional and electronic sports will bring a perspective to sport that could have never been used before or even taught could be used. This gives rise to the opportunity and ability to witness different perspectives in events either through the eyes of the participants and to also become a virtual spectator within an event. This use of VR will increase virtual attendance to bring the stadium atmosphere to the living room, but in the future the use of lens to live stream what a player sees can allow spectators to observe exactly what the player perceives. This opens up channels of marketing and advertising exposure to potential customers.
Mechanised Warfare
Moving to a more digital or mechanised method of ground warfare through the use of mechanical soldiers that can be operated from afar to minimise the loss of life for the side who uses these methods, but this observation won’t be explored further.
Exploration and Mechanised Workforces
Deep sea or space exploration by external means would be a cost effective and safe way to explore to ensure there is no loss of human life with the unknown and inherently dangerous high risk associated with exploration. The futuristic implementation could be used in the workforce for sending mechanised worker robots to a place like Mars to build up an infrastructure before making a colonisation attempt with minimised risk for humanity.
Conclusion
An explosion of the VR industry will have more than just gaming purposes, but will open up new avenues into already well-established industries as outlined above. This will help increase jobs in these industries, as with the implementation of VR systems, the research of the system to perfect its specific use depending on the industry it will be used in, the implementation of the system through a knowledge bank pertinent to that industry, the user education to be harnessed of the system, and an allowance for presenting a practical situation in either a live manner or recorded medium to give the user a completely new dimension to experience and meet their specific educational, entertainment, or industry needs. Having this soon to be powerful technology gives more people opportunity to learn about, and spectate the world around them, but unfortunately with the reality of this situation and the potential that VR brings, we will inevitably see it being used as an advertising and marketing.
To be even more depressing about the situation, VR could be used as an outlet for people who are disenfranchised with the world and how their lives have not played out as they have hoped, so there is a possibility of VR addiction becoming quite a big epidemic thing. Having an individual being able to download a VR programme where they can live the life that they want to live, will raise the question of does a person’s perspective dictate their reality, or does the majority of the populations perspective dictate what reality is? This possible addiction could see dents put into other reality escapes like drug use, but this possible future addiction will harm the well-being of the person through neglecting life’s simplicities, like not eating or self-isolation. By cutting themselves off from humanity out of distain or last resort depression, they may not come back as they may find themselves more accepted in the virtual world.
About Author
Jonathan McEvoy is an Irish based border control post inspector for the Irish Government and Europe Union who took up his role in 2019 in response to British withdrawal of trade agreements, which was a position taken up after time spent working within the financial services sector in Dubai. He is an economics and finance postgraduate from Waterford Institute of Technology and a community stalwart in his home city of Waterford having been elected to serve on many boards of directors around the city in a voluntary capacity. His love of writing has a deep theme of economics in every published article which talk about history, philosophy, finance, politics, and society. His writings are grounded in practical observations away from the theoretical hypothesis of hypothetical potentials. If you are looking for a modern digestible viewpoint on modern economic ideas with a focus practicality and no holding back, he is a writer for you.
Find Jonathan on the social platforms @jonathanmcev0y
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