Dunno, the silly stuff is what saves the film for me. Underneath there is just a banal boy-meets-girl story with bad interpreters (classic Hollywood "attractive girl trying to pretend that she's not attractive", among others); but the ridiculous "VR van" and the smorgasbord of nerdpop references make for some decent smiles, if not laughs.
I really hope that VR simply replaces screens and results in us being somewhat less sedentary. You're right that there is a great danger it could replace a lot more of the real world leading to a dystopian nightmare, things like real social interaction, time spent in nature, and making physical things but these are also the things that have been most severely impacted by screens, mass media, and the internet.
AR is probably the bigger threat to social interaction, allowing us to use our phones without even looking down.
VR lends itself more to MMORPG-like experiences, which are quite social. Similarly, Ready Player One didn't lack social interaction or real friendship.
For time spent in nature or making physical things it's probably the other way around. AR could make these things much more accessible (even if "less pure"), while VR doesn't exactly promote them.
> virtual interactions will never be as real as real world interactions
I'm not quite sure what makes an interaction more or less "real". The people on both ends of the interaction are real, so surely if they interact that is a real interaction?
So far all virtual interactions lack some aspect of communication, but with full-body tracking and eye-tracking VR already offers the closest analog to face-to-face communication we have. Mapping all the tiny facial expressions will remain a challenge, but isn't really that far fetched.
Most of our screen time is spent working. 8+ hours staring at a screen is bad enough for our eyes and brains. Imagine how much worse it will be when that screen is an inch from your eyeballs. I highly doubt that VR will be replacing screens for anything but occasional recreation anytime soon.
I don't find there's too much difference between staring at a computer screen and using VR. VR headsets do provide a motivation to create displays that can allow your eyes to focus on closer or further objects though since they aim to reproduce reality and a big sticking point is the fixed focus nature of all current headsets. We'll have to see if there are any announcements at the next Connect event since they've been working on this technology https://uploadvr.com/half-dome-3-prime-time/
I quit reading it when there was an audience cheering the protagonist on for knowing facts about 80s video games, it just made me super embarrassed, in the same way I used to get when I’d watch the show Doug and he’d talk to Patti Mayonnaise, or literally any scene of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
The difference is the evocation of that embarrassment was intended by the authors of the latter two.
I agree. The whole time I was reading the book I was thinking "I'd probably enjoy this more as movie" and I was right (although only a bit, still didn't care much for the movie). Name dropping a bunch of references for references sake is more effective when you can see them.
Also it seemed clear to me that some chapters only existed to provide notes to a future movie production, and didn't need to be infodumped. (One chapter in particular the only thing that actually happened was he was sitting in class and letting his mind wander, IIRC, and did nothing to drive the plot forward, just infodump).
Well, yes. I didn’t cite the specific silly things from the movie I was referring to. But the one from the trailers that always made me groan was the synchronized sitting down in and buckling themselves in for the car chase. Just tins of cringy stuff in the movie. The book was a quick read with silly things but spoke to my childhood so I enjoyed it
AR/VR does run the high risk of creating a super dystopian and fragmented real world. It’s definitely something to watch out for