The World Isn't Ready for Virtual Reality Simulations of Horrific Realities Like 9/11 (Yet)

Provoking a heated conversation even among Reddit's Oculus VR fans, here's the virtual reality simulation we should have expected:

If you're worried about clicking, don't fret -- it's actually not a great simulation, which ironically, means it doesn't come anywhere close to capturing the full horror people in the World Trade Center must have felt that day. (The bad graphics and the stilted, European-accented dialog are pretty immersion-killing in themselves.) You can actually see far more immersive (and disturbing) simulations of terrorism in the solo campaigns of Call of Duty and other modern conflict games. Which means while this particular demo isn't all that immersive, we should soon expect them to improve, and become truly compelling. And terrifying.

So the question becomes, is the wider world ready to watch simulations like this?

Even VR enthusiasts can't be sure how simulations like this may alter our perceptions and memories of an actual event -- and how that altered perception will change how we think and act around it. Most everyone in the United States was related by one or two degrees with a terrified victim of 9/11, which directly impacted everyone in New York and its surrounding burroughs. And partly as a consequence, overwhelmed by the horror, with so many of us personally impelled to demand a harsh response, the United States as a whole (most now agree) overreacted to the terror attacks on many fronts -- too broadly in military retaliations abroad, too broadly against our civil liberties at home.

What happens, then, when real atrocities like this are readily available as immersive experiences we can share, again and again? Will we just experience them as passive viewers -- or will they, once again, shape our future over-reactions in the real world too?

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Comments

[Jacki Morie]

BTW There was an awesome virtual reality work about the 9/11 event done in a 6-sided CAVE called Ashes to Ashes/911 Memorial Virtual Reality Exhibit by Anne Dean Berma, Carolina Cruz-Niera and others in 2002!!!
It was so emotionally poignant, compelling and haunting. It was based on things the sruvivors said.
Here's one link to it.
http://www.annedeaneberman.com/watch.html
There is a bit of a video there, and a description. Might have to wait for it to load.

This new rush to commodify anything high profile or horrific is not doing VR any good, IMHO.

[Argo Nurmi]

Hamlet I think you've described something that far more troubling for future uses of VR and that is its potential for indoctrination and propaganda. The 1960's was full of movies with paranoid fantasies about people being "programmed," by implanting entirely false memories or conditioning (Deighton's "Ipcress Files" comes to mind). But, for how much longer will it remain a fantasy? VR is still in its early days and its potential to create a potent psychological effect is already recognized. All technology can be used for good and bad. After the First World War advertising learned many of its now familiar techniques (in a lighter form) from the vicious propaganda war waged between the Central and Allied Powers. Why can we not expect the same from VR? It is just the obverse of Rosedale's vision.