044: Jason Ganz on “What is the Future of Virtual Reality?”

In this episode we talk to guest Jason Ganz of Agora VR. You may know Jason from his efforts as a moderator on the Futurology subreddit and the Futurology podcast. He's an enthusiastic supporter and we had a wide-ranging, informative conversation we think you are going to find fascinating. We cover some of the newest advances in the rapidly exploding VR space, including the Oculus rift and the Google Cardboard project, omnidirectional treadmills, haptics, new sensors from Leap Motion and the new fibre-optic in-eye monitor being developed by Magic Leap. We discuss the obvious upsides to better VR technology as well as the ways ephemeralizing experiences might add to technological unemployment and superstar economic effects. We also touch on age-old media canards like addiction and problems with realistic violence, and whether the coming VR multiverse is more likely to be an open-source competitive paradise or a nightmare walled-garden "Zuckerverse."

Om Podcasten

Enter a simulated universe where software beings engage in classic human struggles for belonging, status, and attention, and old certainties like death and gravity are just settings to be negotiated. You can be the god of your own private world, but if find yourself feeling lonely, you might be tempted to give away some of your precious control. This podcast will take you behind the scenes with comic book authors and veteran podcasters Jon Perry (@perryjon) and Ted Kupper (@tedkupper) as they write and develop a science fiction graphic novel called Constellation, set in a metaverse unlike any you’ve seen before: neither a utopia nor a dystopia, neither real nor virtual, it is a simulation where everyone knows they are being simulated and no one much cares, where there’s no hope of leaving and no reason to, just an endless supply of human-designed worlds to create and explore.