Open Forum: What Are Your Real New Year's Resolutions for Virtual Reality?

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Open Forum: What Are Your Real New Year's Resolutions for Virtual Reality?

Share your virtual world resolutions here! I'll start with a couple:

Refresh my genuine enthusiasm for virtual worlds/reality.

After seeing promises go unfulfilled or fall far short for over a decade, I have to admit some skepticism, often causing a reflexive, hair-trigger "Meh I've heard that hype before" reaction. Thing is, history doesn't always repeat, and even if a technology doesn't become The Next Great Disruptive Power, it can still be important and cool in itself all the same. Seeing the great top entries in that Killer VR app contest I helped manage last month helped remind me of that -- as did the burst of creativity around Bento avatars. This year, hopefully, I'll try to maintain as much curiosity and enthusiasm for what's coming in the next 12 months.

Another:

Devote even more time covering how virtual culture impacts real world politics.

2016, as Leigh Alexander put is, was "The Year the Internet Became Real", and we're still feeling that impact. Or as my friend Tom Boellstorff put it, "Trump Won Because He Understood the Digital is Real"... though I doubt Trump himself actually understands that. His chief advisor, who once ran a virtual world company and grew his "alt right"/white supremacist following by embracing GamerGate, understands that truth all too well. Now it falls to us who've been swimming in virtual culture for years to point out how it's now corroding our confidence in institutions that cannot thrive without a very real foundation.

Anyway, those are my resolutions -- what are yours? (Some of which I'd love to share in a future post.)

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