Believe it or not, the technology will soon be available for you to shift your corporate work life to virtual reality – a digital world that makes remote work intimate again.
A dystopia for many, this tech is a dream come true for a handful of rich billionaires. And it’s coming to a workplace near you whether you like it or not. Soon. Very soon.
Let’s take a look at how virtual reality (VR) in remote work would actually work, but first: what is virtual reality?
What is Virtual Reality?
As the name implies, it’s a reality that is entirely virtual. A not-real reality. It’s a computer-generated three-dimensional environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or ‘physical’ way by a person using electronic equipment, such as a helmet and special gloves fitted with sensors.
While it was once relegated to the realm of science fiction, virtual reality is now an actual reality. You might have also heard of it as the metaverse…
What is the Metaverse?
A metaverse is a specific type of virtual reality in which multiple users can participate and interact at the same time and virtual place. There are technically many different types of metaverse. The most famous at the moment has notoriously been a bit of a failure: Meta.
Facebook rebranded to Meta in 2021 and tried to push their virtual reality metaverse as the next step in social media. Most people laughed at it. A few people tried it out and then laughed at it. Meta stock took a dive as a result, but just two months ago, there was an interview conducted using unreleased Meta tech that has people in awe. It allows two people from the opposite side of the world to project photo-realistic avatars into a virtual space to have a conversation that feels like being in the same room.
Check this out for creepy!
It’s only logical to assume that this type of technology will be released to the public at some point in the future. While it might not be affordable for your average Joe to buy a state-of-the-art virtual reality headset, you’re in luck! Your employers may purchase it on your behalf! Think of company laptops and other bits and bobs. Your VR headset might be an integral part of your work hardware in the future.
While this Meta tech is groundbreaking, it’s still to be decided whether or not Meta will be the king of the metaverse. After all, there are hundreds of metaverse projects being built with decentralization at their core. These projects tend to be blockchain-based.
What Has Blockchain Got To Do With Anything?
When people say metaverse, crypto bros are often the first thing they think of, with a cringe and a full-body shiver. That’s because the metaverse is a popular focus for tons of blockchain-based crypto projects.
While crypto metaverses are often criticized for being basic and cartoony, there are definite benefits for wanting to build a metaverse in a decentralized manner using a blockchain.
For starters, decentralization prevents companies like Meta from owning and selling all your data (which is currently how it makes its money). Imagine if these “virtual reality video calls” are the next step – it would automatically give Meta access to your entire conversation, including body language, expressions, and even physical likeness. Privacy would become a thing of the past (if there’s any we’re still hanging onto in the first place).
In addition to that, Meta is a centralized body with a single point of failure. If a malicious actor targets Meta, they can access millions of people’s data (as they have many times before) and steal your private conversations, but also the likeness of you.
Just as Bitcoin allows you to save your money in your own personal wallet (a.k.a a private bank vault that only you have access to), the same underlying blockchain tech can allow you to save your data in the same way. In order for a hacker to access millions of people’s data, they’d have to hack millions of individuals separately. It becomes an impossibility.
So fret not, that crypto bro might be buying pixelated NFTs with their grandma’s pocket money, or virtual land in Snoopverse, but there are some out there that are trying to stave off the technocratic dystopia that awaits us all.
Working in Virtual Reality
VR in remote work will never be a thing, right? Surely virtual reality won’t actually catch on… Well, remember when people said the internet was a passing fad? Or that people wouldn’t be able to afford cars? Or that touchscreen mobile phones wouldn’t do well?
This may be the same story all over again. As much as we hate to admit it, the tech is pretty far along. That Mark Zuckerberg interview gives us actual chills, but you can’t deny that having a photo-realistic avatar instead of some clunky cartoon is certainly appealing. It makes the whole scenario seem… well, lifelike. That’s the most bone-chilling part of it all. It’s actually impressive!
So if it catches on, what can you expect?
- Remote work meetings: Just like how you have Zoom calls or Google Meets today, you’d be able to have meetings with your work colleagues every day. In the future, though, having a bunch of screens with people’s faces on will be a laughable reminder of the past – like dial-up internet connection. Instead, you’ll be able to project your full body avatar into your virtual work environment and talk to your colleagues in your very own office matrix.
- Brainstorming and collaboration: Collaborating remotely with your peers will be a helluva lot easier when doing VR remote work. In online meetings, it can often be hard to brainstorm and collaborate as there are often too many people in one call, not wanting to step on each other’s digital toes. When you’re all in an environment akin to your office, it will be a lot easier to contribute and participate in discussions or planning sessions like real life.
- Recording meetings: Recording your Zoom, Google Meet, or MS Teams calls is an essential part of meetings now for keeping a record of what was said. But in virtual reality, recording your meetings will take things to a whole nother level. Potentially, you’d be able to record the entire environment and manually move the camera around to watch what’s happening from any angle you wish. Not to mention, you’d be able to get a full transcript with highly accurate speaker recognition. Oh wait, that’s available today with tl;dv for free…
What Could Go Wrong?
Most people – especially those familiar with Black Mirror – will probably think this is an Orwellian nightmare. But whether we like it or not, VR is on the cards. So what can we expect? What’s the worst that could happen?
- Our entire shift is in virtual reality: There’d seemingly be no point in working remotely if we all had to stay in the virtual office all day. But when it comes to renting office space, especially in a big city, you might find that companies much prefer to work remotely. In fact, it may even create an entirely new type of work: virtual working. You’d keep all the benefits of working in-office (possibly even with designated break rooms to socialize with your colleagues on a more intimate level than video calls allow), and most of the benefits of working remotely (being anywhere on the planet), while saving all the money on office rental.
- It takes over more of our lives: It’s not just the workplace that VR is gunning for. Games, social media, online shopping, and messenger apps are all potentially getting their feet wet with VR. Imagine GTA but you’re a photorealistic version of yourself and can have physical sensations. Who knows what the societal and mental ramifications of such stimulation would be. There’s also the idea of going to virtual shops to try things on. This isn’t as absurd as it sounds. In fact, there are several retailers already doing this on a small scale.
- We become lonelier: We’re already a lot more isolated than we once were, especially since the pandemic. But VR threatens to smash an even bigger wedge in between people. While it’s all well and good that the avatars can be photorealistic, it will still never be an adequate substitute for the real thing. We need human interaction and virtual reality threatens to separate us physically more than ever before.
- We live permanently in virtual reality: What sounds ridiculous at first glance, isn’t too hard to believe when you think of how long kids spend playing video games nowadays, or how glued civilization is to mobile phones. All it takes is the right company to create addictive, habit-building behaviors embedded into VR, and boom! Wave goodbye to sunlight, exercise and healthy eating. It’ll take the term couch potato to another level. Ever seen Inception? Remember those people wired up in an artificial slumber because they believe the dream world is real? That’s us in the future! 😀
So, all in all, there’s not much to lose! The worst that can happen is we lose all our human rights and privileges and become digital slaves trapped in a make-believe world where the developers can literally code new laws of reality, while we waste our life becoming more and more detached from what it is to be human, eventually merging with machine and living forever in an unfulfilling shadow fantasy.
But hey, we’ll save on office costs!
VR Remote Work: A Real Possibility?
Whether or not VR remote work actually comes to fruition is still up in the air. If you asked most people today whether they would like it, they’d probably tell you no. But if you’d have asked those same people twenty years ago if they’d like to spend 8 hours per day staring at a screen, they’d have probably said no then too!
All we know is, remote work is ever-evolving. And we’re gonna stay on top of it, every step of the way.
Download tl;dv for free and start recording, transcribing, and getting AI notes and summaries for your meetings today! Signing up will take you two minutes and there’s no commitment to paying anything.
