Don’t be scared

This picture of Mark Zuckerberg walking in the aisle at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has been circulating everywhere on social media. It received many negative comments and people are comparing this to common visions of the future, shared by Matrix, the 1984 Macintosh ad or Wall-E.

I read articles from bloggers and journalists saying that they are feeling worried about this picture and that it scares them how Mark seems calm in the middle of those people with a VR headset on their heads, looking like an army.

I didn’t quite get it so here is my vision.

VR is a huge technology that will allow us to experience the World differently, live experiences we can’t live. The endless possibilities of VR in term of human experiences goes far beyond this image! Revolutionizing gaming, but not only. I see this as a real progress: share moments with people having almost the feeling to be with them, discover parts of the World you can’t go to (for financial or physical reasons), etc. In a World where we are trying to save our energy, fuel etc. VR is proposing an alternate way to discover and share moments together.

In the Entertainment business, this technology is offering a new experience… Watch a 360 movie on Netflix, be Nate Drake in Uncharted and explore the jungle, live some amazing adventure as Edward Kenway sailing his pirate ship, and that’s just the beginning…

This is just one future and an exciting one in my opinion, nothing to be scared about. If you’ve read Ready Player One, you may understand what I mean.

VR will be an alternate way to play, watch movies, experience social interactions and will not replace IRL… At the end, we are humans, it’s our choice to embrace this revolution or not, and to find the balance between IRL and digital life. But didn’t we already made that choice somehow, facing our screens and mobiles all day?!

I leave this to you…