Just like with most pieces of technology, how a person decides they want to use it is really up to them. Sure there are rules like what’s legal and what’s illegal, but at the end of the day it’s up to someone to decide if they want to use the internet to sell illicit drugs or if they want to use the internet to promote knowledge about a worthy cause.The same can be said with virtual reality (VR), but it seems that a group of experts has decided that maybe the ethics behind VR is something that government should have a hand in. In a report from Polygon, it seems that a group of experts are set to hold an informal meeting with members of a government regulatory body to discuss the ethics of VR and the potential danger of immersive technology.
According to one of the experts, Todd Richmond, who heads up the University of Southern California’s Mixed Reality Lab, “The reality is that a child’s brain development is a thing and we do have this possibility of, if you immerse somebody and allow them to embody certain situations at a very young age, while the brain is still plastic, it may lead to deleterious effects. The same could be true of adults, but less so.”
He adds, “VR developers wield a lot of power. You are literally putting someone’s brain in your hands.” Now exactly what will become of these talks remains to be seen, and whether or not the government will step in in a formal way remains to be seen, but what do you guys think? Is VR a technology that needs to be governed in such a way?
Filed in . Read more about Legal and Virtual Reality (VR).