Downloading happiness

A bright light filled my eyes, my head, and then my whole being. No audio poured through, but it was amazing.

This was the Samsung Gear VR, a virtual reality headset that had come to office for review, and was now strapped up my head. Causing a bright light at first, the headset dropped me among dancing penguins.

I get nervous whenever penguins shake around me, so nervous that I had refused to set foot in Antarctica, after a penguin misled my expedition on the continent by bringing it to the lair of a bipolar bear, shifting between North and South poles, hence bipolar - and moody and depressed, because bipolar means that too. Therefore, when a virtual penguin danced right through me, as if it were a ghost, my heart sank, and then miraculously shot up: I had faced my worst fear - and overcome it. Bliss came over me as I matched steps with penguins, and, for a moment, I was a child again, with this giant penguin lovingly playing with me. It gave me such a profound perspective on what it must be like to be a dancing penguin (as opposed to being the rogue penguin who misled my expedition), that I started to cry inside the headset. It was a pure and beautiful experience that will reshape my relationship with penguins (dancing ones only) forever. I was vulnerable to penguins, but now I felt completely safe wearing the head-mounted display.

After immersion into VR, I was fine for a few minutes but, while inching across the room, I started to expect a virtual grid to appear, so I could step aside, mentally, into a virtual space, even without the equipment. Normally, there are limits to human perception, but mine were shifting already.

Before this, I had never used a headset. Most importantly, the experience helped me see VR as a technology that can bring people places - such as Antarctica - they might not otherwise want to reach.

That day in office, dozens tried the headset. Before I put it on my face, I looked at these people and laughed at how idiotic they looked with the headset on. But soon, my eyes fell on their smiles instead. "How happy they are right now," I thought.

A 2011 bestseller that Steven Spielberg is adapting for a film shows something similar. In Ready Player One, the poor spend most of their lives engaged in VR, enjoying themselves. That time may not be far off as many VR headsets already cost as little as cheap smartphones: Samsung Gear VR, the one I tried, costs Rs 7,900. All this makes it possible for VR to give "release" to billions of poor who crave the high life, by letting them download virtual versions of everything the rich take for granted, in other words, by letting them download happiness.

The theme is already playing across smog-shrouded Beijing, where many workers remain engrossed in 3-D fantasy games, in internet cafes or in suffocating subways.

The theme is playing out well for me, too. I had a hard time focusing on this piece. Doom, judgement, anxiety filled my head as I sat down to work.

So I escaped to Second Life, a virtual world where many, like me, neglect their offline responsibilities and relationships, just to be there. Majority spend six-plus hours daily within Second Life, my rough survey found, and derive more happiness in that world than in the real one.

If a computer-based virtual world can suck us in, like that, imagine how a VR-based one will kill us all - with happiness.

ashish.sharma@bsmail.in