3 ms·

I don't understand what problem VR/AR is solving in your hypothetical.

falcor84 9y ago
Not the OP, but I've been thinking about this a lot recently. The problem is that telecommuting is currently very limited by technology. You can currently only transport your voice and a single video view, while collaborating over a single view from a monitor. You end up missing on very many of the modalities available in the real world. But my vision of what work and study could be like with good VR is The Magic School Bus. Assume that every time you an your colleagues wanted to do work on any domain, you would be transported into a hi-fi all-senses-included representation of that domain, which provides a perfect sense of presence. That technology is still quite far away, but once we're there, it would be significantly better than just being in a room with them. And the world would be forever changed.
- dwighttk 9y ago
  so: constricted communication bandwidth?
  - SmooL 9y ago
    That's one way to describe it, a better way might be that's its not bandwidth that limits remote working communication, but just a lack of features. To loop this back to the topic at hand, the idea is that you need people in the same space to work effectively. That idea forces collections of people (cities) and drives up the value of the land (a fixed commodity). Having technology that removes the need to have the workforce physically opens up vast amounts of relatively cheap land to live on.
    - dwighttk 9y ago
      I think the efficiency gain from cities is more than just some people working in a single company, but all sorts of logistical savings. Perhaps my imagination isn't big enough, but I just don't see VR replacing dasein as it were.
      - mncharity 9y ago
        > efficiency gain from cities Sure. It's just that "tolerable commute" would no longer need to be one of those gains. A fun conversation went by with someone from the Sierra Club. It was pointed out that the built environment which best matched their resource conservation/efficiency goals, was Manhattan. Their response was something like "yes, but we don't emphasize that, because it wouldn't appeal to our membership". ;) > dasein Picture brainstorming in front of a hallway whiteboard. Picture grabbing some nearby colleagues to collaborate. Now picture how relatively ineffective and unpleasant it would to do that collaboration over video conferencing and such. It's suboptimal, but that's a price you're sometimes willing to pay for non-locality. But now imagine that given a choice, you would much prefer to be brainstorming in front of a virtual whiteboard.[1] And collaborating there. Simply because it's a more powerful and helpful environment. So your physical whiteboard languishes, gets taken down for wall painting, and is never rehung. Then non-locality is no longer something you pay for. Locality constraints are just gone. There's a fun decades-old metric on communication technology: Given some communication task, and a choice of technologies, how far would you walk to get access to them? Physical letter, email, phone, in-person conversation. Down the hall, different floor, different building, across the city. Already, there are some tasks where even if you are sitting in the same office, you would use some tech rather than turning around. VR/AR seems likely to greatly increase that set of tasks. Reducing the importance of being able to physically walk to people. [1] Here's a limited existing virtual whiteboard: http://store.steampowered.com/app/585040/Dry_Erase_Infinite_VR_Whiteboard/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/585040/Dry_Erase_Infinite_...

Not the OP, but I've been thinking about this a lot recently. The problem is that telecommuting is currently very limited by technology. You can currently only transport your voice and a single video view, while collaborating over a single view from a monitor. You end up missing on very many of the modalities available in the real world. But my vision of what work and study could be like with good VR is The Magic School Bus. Assume that every time you an your colleagues wanted to do work on any domain, you would be transported into a hi-fi all-senses-included representation of that domain, which provides a perfect sense of presence. That technology is still quite far away, but once we're there, it would be significantly better than just being in a room with them. And the world would be forever changed.

dwighttk 9y ago
so: constricted communication bandwidth?
- SmooL 9y ago
  That's one way to describe it, a better way might be that's its not bandwidth that limits remote working communication, but just a lack of features. To loop this back to the topic at hand, the idea is that you need people in the same space to work effectively. That idea forces collections of people (cities) and drives up the value of the land (a fixed commodity). Having technology that removes the need to have the workforce physically opens up vast amounts of relatively cheap land to live on.
  - dwighttk 9y ago
    I think the efficiency gain from cities is more than just some people working in a single company, but all sorts of logistical savings. Perhaps my imagination isn't big enough, but I just don't see VR replacing dasein as it were.
    - mncharity 9y ago
      > efficiency gain from cities Sure. It's just that "tolerable commute" would no longer need to be one of those gains. A fun conversation went by with someone from the Sierra Club. It was pointed out that the built environment which best matched their resource conservation/efficiency goals, was Manhattan. Their response was something like "yes, but we don't emphasize that, because it wouldn't appeal to our membership". ;) > dasein Picture brainstorming in front of a hallway whiteboard. Picture grabbing some nearby colleagues to collaborate. Now picture how relatively ineffective and unpleasant it would to do that collaboration over video conferencing and such. It's suboptimal, but that's a price you're sometimes willing to pay for non-locality. But now imagine that given a choice, you would much prefer to be brainstorming in front of a virtual whiteboard.[1] And collaborating there. Simply because it's a more powerful and helpful environment. So your physical whiteboard languishes, gets taken down for wall painting, and is never rehung. Then non-locality is no longer something you pay for. Locality constraints are just gone. There's a fun decades-old metric on communication technology: Given some communication task, and a choice of technologies, how far would you walk to get access to them? Physical letter, email, phone, in-person conversation. Down the hall, different floor, different building, across the city. Already, there are some tasks where even if you are sitting in the same office, you would use some tech rather than turning around. VR/AR seems likely to greatly increase that set of tasks. Reducing the importance of being able to physically walk to people. [1] Here's a limited existing virtual whiteboard: http://store.steampowered.com/app/585040/Dry_Erase_Infinite_VR_Whiteboard/ http://store.steampowered.com/app/585040/Dry_Erase_Infinite_...