Virtual Reality is a hot topic now. After years in the wilderness we are seeing many companies push boundaries. One such company is Oculus (Rift). Facebook bought them for $2 billion and it made complete sense. The Future of Virtual Reality: Facebook and Oculus Rift features a chat with Mark Zuckerberg and Michael Abrash along with some ideas of how Oculus and VR may impact the world.

Mark Zuckerberg and Oculus’s Michael Abrash on Why Virtual Reality Is the Next Big Thing

After the founder and C.E.O. of Facebook paid $2 billion for Oculus’s virtual-reality technology, Zuckerberg and the chief scientist of Oculus VR discuss the next breakthrough to connect everyone on earth / the next big breakthrough. Moderated by Steven Levy, the editor in chief of Backchannel.

How Facebook and Oculus Might be Used

OK, Facebook has the tech. It will rollout in 2016. What will it be used for? Here are some ideas of how there will be an incredible democracy of access enabled by Facebook and Oculus:

• Remote work meetings
  • Teleconferencing and Skype is one way but really quite impersonal. Being able to virtually place yourself in a meeting with multiple other people is going to be much more connective and potentially productive.

• Pay-per-experience Concerts
  • Pay-per-view is a normal happenstance in the world of entertainment today. What if you could drop yourself into a Kanye West concert and have the best seat in the house? Or, maybe even the best 20 experience points – front row, on-stage, backstage, dressing room etc. This will be huge.

• Connecting with relatives – past and present
  • If we can encode ourselves into these systems and create language-based AI that is trained with the nuances of individuals then maybe we can continue those great conversations with our relatives that are no longer with us.

• Advertising
  • It’s inevitable that brands will want in. I personally think that there will be a subtlety that will be needed with brands taking the backseat to experience and enabling them.

• Vacations
  • The world is a large place and there are many wonders to see out there.

Think of all of this tied into a subscription-based model and Oculus and tens of thousands of VR experiences will take Facebook to even greater profits and more ubiquity in the world.

***

Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.