There are two dirty secrets about VR that are rarely discussed: porn and propaganda.
Virtual Reality: When Seeing is Believing
That Virtual Reality is the perfect means to enhance the porn experience is obvious. That it is a potentially insidious political weapon that can be leveraged to manipulate people, brands or politically, however, is rarely discussed. If the lessons from the 2016 US electoral campaign and continued interference with US media have taught us anything, it’s that lack of oversight of technology and social media can have powerful repercussions. So what can we learn about the hypnotic power of VR and how it can be used?
As a storytelling tool, Virtual Reality lives up to its name; it creates an immediate and fully immersive environment in which the default state is belief.
Full immersion creates a sense of “presence” likened to the physical feeling of being in that space. As VR pioneer Chris Milk explained, With virtual reality,
you’re essentially hacking the visual-audio system of your brain and feeding it a set of stimuli that are close enough to the stimuli it expects, that it sees it as truth . Instead of suspending your disbelief, you actually have to remind yourself not to believe.
Milk’s first VR film, Clouds over Sidra, about a Syrian girl in a refugee camp, helped the United Nations UNICEF raise awareness about how ordinary people tried to conduct normal lives in extraordinary circumstances.
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“ These films can help donors understand the everyday reality of ordinary people caught in the middle of conflict [and] can help form policies and raise funding,”
…said Patrick Milling Smith, co-founder of California-based production company Vrse.works, which partnered the UN to produce the videos. Donars at the UNICEF fundraiser where the film was aired were so moved by the film that the organization raised $1.5 billion more than the projected $2.3 billion fundraising goal.
In a recent quarterly earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg affirmed that, “When done well, video brings us closer together.”
But what if it were used for less noble aims?
With high-definition, immersive video experiences people remember what they saw as if it really happened. If produced by an extremist political group, VR could be an effective way to teach alternate versions of history, with powerful consequences.
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What happens when you can’t tell real from fake?
Instead of being the ultimate ”empathy” machine, VR may instead be the “ultimate seduction” machine with a power that may be difficult to control.
Facts and misinformation are comingled in a world where there are no umpires, and corporations are tasked with self -censorship with limited oversight, and results.
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According to a recent New York Times article, Facebook said the” Internet Research Agency…a Russian agency with links to the Kremlin, had posted roughly 80,000 pieces of divisive content that was shown to 29 million people between January 2015 and August 2017” and other Russian content, to a total of 126 million people overall.
Facebook looks to increase social engagement with VR, should you worry?
In 2015 Facebook announced its decision to make a significant commitment to delivering rich content with VR following its acquisition of the Oculus Rift.
“We believe Virtual Reality is the next major computing platform,” the company wrote in a post.
As Facebook seeks to make VR more mainstream and user engagement increases, how can the content be controlled if they aren’t able to do so now?
If Virtual reality can change what a person sees, how they think, what they feel and even how someone behaves…
…how can you stop nefarious information from being spread: about your brand, product, or company?
Michael Madary and Thomas K. Metzinger, researchers from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, in Germany, published a series of recommendations on the ethical design and implementation of virtual reality. Their appraisal of the medium’s psychological force is both studious and foreboding. The wrote,“The power of V.R. to induce particular kinds of emotions could be used deliberately to cause suffering”.
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VR is proven to have substantially higher rates of engagement and sharing than regular media, including video. When combined with the use of other technologies and the virality with which it spreads, a media bonfire can prove hard to extinguish if not lethal to anything in its path. Companies must prepare for the potential fallout of such a targeted attack.
Written by Catherine Dionne Henry
Source: Catherine Dionne Henry