In the different environments I can project into, I am still part of the earth’s orbit. On the left, the Milky Way; far above, the moon reflected the faint fire she stole from the sun; on the right, the city lights of Southeast Asia burn for me alone; and right in front of me an email told me I needed to change the payment code on my time card and send it back ASAP. The slow-moving globe shows all the places that I could explore and experience if I weren’t here completely isolated.
I started to wonder, am I going crazy on this spaceship? I asked Monideepa Tarafdar, a professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, about the stress of using technology, starting with working from home in general. “You’re kind of isolated, and technology is the only object you interact with. And everything gets bigger. All the technical issues get bigger than they really are,” she said. “And now you want to put virtual reality first.”
In one research paper, Tarafdar carefully distinguishes distress, which is the stress that makes us worse, from depression, the stress that drives us to do better. “You’re losing positive stressors,” key among which are others. “Family life, I think, is a good thing.”
The personality of the Immersed app is the “tech brother”. From the introductory guide, it suggested that I “Get started today!” weekly email that compares my time in VR with that of ostensibly “power users”, all to maximize productivity. It’s true: I’m so focused on my work, so deeply immersed in the area, that I don’t notice my forehead numb. I can’t see signs like the sun going down another day, and I don’t see the mess in the meat space room, I don’t distract myself by getting up to clean something every 20 minute.
The house is getting messy.
But I want to use the headset in a way that is less “crushing imaginary opponents” and more “corpse pose”. About six months after receiving this VR headset, in the back of my closet, I found one of the inflatable pool rafts that people float to enjoy the coolness of the water and the warmth of the sun. . I put it on the floor of this room, where I’m lying now with every muscle relaxed. A virtual screen hovered a meter and a half above my head in a way that would be possible with a real screen only after a lot of carpentry. My hands are on either side, right on the laptop’s keyboard and left on an external keyboard plugged into the laptop. I put a hood over my head, not because I’m an “elite hacker” but because it keeps me out of the heat. For the same reason, I cover myself with blankets, leaving only my chin exposed and muffled sounds as I type these words for you.
This is the working promise from VR: total stillness but for an active mind. The world doesn’t bother me, and in return I don’t disturb it.
I finally made it to the cyberpunk future of my dreams, joining the Matrix, now renamed Metaverse. But in all my excitement when I got there, I didn’t realize that by choosing to be there, I had chosen to disappear myself from here.
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