Brain Implant VR
I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I’ve been enjoying reading Jaron Lainer’s book Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality.
One thing that he talks about briefly is the idea, which you hear a lot when Virtual Reality is mentioned, that we won’t get real VR until we can directly send sensory signals to the brain. Briefly explain, the idea is that whatever display divice is innately imperfect and that we can only get a perfect simulacrum of the world by bypassing the senses and sending signals to the brain.
Since this is a common idea, I thought I would talk about Lanier’s take on it and share some of my ideas.
VR is active not passive
Lanier’s main point is that the basic version of this view misunderstands how perception works. Perception isn’t just a passive absorbtion of signals from the world, but an active process:
Remember, eyes aren’t USB cameras plugged into a Mr Potato Head brain; they are portals on a spy submarine exploring an unknown universe. Exploration is perception.
So the problem of brain stimulation VR is much harder than even the currently seemingly impossible task of sending sensations direct to the brain. We must simulate both those sensations and also record the signals that we send to our muscles to move. Not only that, we would have to simulate the interaction between them.
A non-existent medium
Not only is that a hard problem, but we don’t even know if it is possible. It could easily be that the brain just doesn’t work that want. It might be completely impossible to simply separate out those signals from the mass of brain activity (this doesn’t seem that unlikely a hypothesis, there are more backwards connections going from the brain to the eyes than vice versa, so whatever is happening in perception is way more complex than simply receiving signals).
Even if it is possible, it won’t be happening any time soon. It took almost 50 years from VR to go from the first proof of concept, the sword of damocles, to the first consumer product. For brain stimulation we aren’t even anywhere near a proof of concept, just some initial scientific experiments in brain stimulation which probably stand in relation to brain stimulation VR as the first electric light stands to the sword of damocles.
Why should we even assume it will be better? Surely the first attempts at brain stimulation VR will be impossibly crude, just able to show some flashing lights, nothing like a real environment. By that time headset based VR will be very sophisticated, far better than anything we imagine now. A good analogy is brain computer interfaces. In theory controlling a computer with your brain would be the most natural user interface, but, in practice, current technologies are impossibly slow and difficult. It takes tens of seconds of highly concentrated thought just to move a cursor a few pixels. It is currently only used by people with severe paralysis because it is too limited for anyone else.
Philosophical VR
In some ways brain implant VR is a variation of what I call “philosophical VR”, which has a long history. That is the idea of VR being used in philosophical thought experiments, like “what if we were just brains in vats being fed fake sensory information”.
The idea has lead to some interesting philosophy and Scifi, but now we have real VR, an actual medium and I think that is much more exciting. It is way less perfect that philosophical VR, anything practical will alway be less perfect that theory, but it’s still way better than any previous medium. What’s more it is the medium we have now, so let’s take an interest in it, rather than looking for some future perfect VR.
If Brain Implant VR is possible, and ever happens, it will be a completely new medium. It will have to have a new name because “VR” is already then, but we will have quite a long time to think about what that name can be.
