Week 13

For today’s homework I will be talking about the Microsoft DreamWalker project by Brent Yurek. To start of the Microsoft DreamWalker project is a project that basically imagines a world in which we live everyday life actions like walking from place to place in the virtual reality realm. This project is basically made out of multiple off the shelf devices like windows mixed reality headset as well as compact desktop pc on a backpack. Using inside out tracking of the virtual reality headset as well as GPS positioning reading from the smartphone displayed on top of the headset. Seeing the simplicity of the everyday commonly used devices as part of this kind of experimentation really brings to prospective the type of technology available being so powerful enough to almost completely recreate environments in a virtual reality. It also leaves with a lot of questions like is living life in a virtual reality really an improvement along these technologies? Don’t get me wrong I like the fact that these three dimensional objects are being made as both the reading of the environment and GPS location influence and modify actual three dimensional objects within the unity environment.

What concerns me the most is the human effect this type of project is causing. As we have seen throughout our time technology for all its good has some really bad baggage long with it that makes the idea of isolationism and effectively alters human behaviors. When you take human from human interactions out of the equation, we start to see a high and really destructive path that ultimately leads to some harmful and even deadly thoughts. We already live in trying times now as we have a hard time struggling to maintained and manage mental health and I fear that this pursuit although pushing forward this idea of unbelievable precision tracking and image rendering that might advance this already behemoth kinds of technology leaves us to really need to take a step back and draw to our need and want for a more connective and understanding processing of interacting on a scale that only a human can achieve with another.

I also think that this idea seems really out of place with a price points that most regular people really couldn’t afford or want to spend the absurd amount of money for a product that might leave a person more depressed than when they bought the item to begin with. In the end I believe this advances some technologies but is not really worth the kind of risk and mental instability that is achieved and most likely to be cause by complete isolation from the real world.