Oculus Rift is going to destroy families and relationships

OPINION: It’s arrived and there’s certainly no stopping it. But what will be the social impact as virtual reality headsets become the new must-have gadget?

What will be the social impact of virtual reality headsets?

OPINION

OCULUS Rift turned out to be an unintentionally ideal name for a gadget dedicated to carving ruptures between people. They also could have called it the “Digital Chasm” or the “Interaction Canyon.”

The virtual-reality headsets promise to further widen what is already an alarming, tech-induced gap among couples, friends and families.

The Oculus Rift is perhaps the leading virtual reality headset on the market, not to mention expensive. For Aussies, importing one of these kits from the US is upwards of $1100 once delivery costs and tax are added to the $US599 price tag. And even if you order one now, it won’t arrive until July at the earliest.

But what will be the social impact when virtual reality headsets become the new must-have gadget?

Smartphones have already whipped up a wasteland of blankness — the real-life equivalent of dead air on the radio.

We’re living in “Um, honey?” time. As in, “Um, honey, how was your day at school?” (No answer. Lots of tapping.)

“Um, honey, have you seen my glasses?” (No answer. “Memes” are being considered.)

“Um, honey? I need your attention, please. Please? We have an infestation of Gila monsters. The house is burning down. I’m leaving you for another family.” (No answer. Snapchat being checked.)

The Oculus Rift? It’s basically a smartphone you wrap around your face. Put it on; reality can’t get in.

Think your kids are hard to connect with now? Wait till they get themselves an Oculus Rift and begin to expend all their attention, instead of just most of it, on the Great Elsewhere. They’ll be off in a world of their own imagining: hiking up Everest. Having a light-sabre duel with Kylo Ren. Joining the Kardashian family.

Considering the porn implications of the gadgets, we’re now within half a step of the Orgasmatron, the Woody Allen-invented virtual reality capsule (from the 1973 film Sleeper, which also accurately predicted the resurgence of fatty food and the surprising endurance of the Volkswagen Beetle), which couples short on time would use for a brisk, machine-made sexual experience.

What Woody got wrong (in the scene in which Miles Monroe mistakenly enters the Orgasmatron alone) was that tech would assume the existence of couples.

No, tech is turning out to be the great atomiser, wrenching people apart. I well remember the first time (maybe eight years ago) I saw a couple in a restaurant, clearly on a date, yet each of them gazing longingly into a smartphone instead of addressing the facing person. I thought: Here. It. Comes.

A woman tries a virtual reality device. (Photo: AFP/Juan Mabromata).

Smartphones today are zapping dates, dinners, conversations and spontaneous meetings so everyone can disappear into his own independent iFog. Another filmmaker, Wim Wenders, foresaw this as far back as 1991, in his unappreciated but brilliant film Until the End of the World. In a post-apocalyptic climax, a tech gadget that can record your dreams takes the form of a wraparound virtual-reality headset exactly like the Oculus Rift. Users become addicted to their own interiors, and they begin to wander the land in the headsets, blind to one another, in a lonely daze.

Maybe we’re smarter than that. Maybe people will see the Rift forming and take a step back. Maybe Oculus Rift will be the next Google Glass.

Or maybe people will soon be using the gadget to watch videos of Sleeper and Until the End of the World, thinking: Given those prophecies, why couldn’t we have had our Oculus Rift sooner?