Reading a mostly lame set of predictions for the future, I came across this: “Virtual reality – Glasses which show you a world that isn’t there.”
That’s exactly wrong. The drive to realize “Virtual Reality” is not to escape into a world that doesn’t exist but to hone in on the one that does; it’s a selective vision.
As Alice in Wonderland illustrates, virtual reality is a dive into the borders of reality, into the dense, unseen background that we push out of sight, out of of mind in order to focus on and execute our daily routines.
That’s why “augmented reality”, both the term and the experiences it describes, has caught on where “virtual reality” never did.