Apple’s entrance into V.R. has symbolic weight, because the company has had so much influence on computers and phones. Back in 1984, when the Macintosh was introduced, a few members of the Mac team left Apple to join my startup, V.P.L., and help us create the first generation of commercial V.R. products. At the time, we guessed that Apple itself would enter the market in 2010. We knew that the consumer adoption of the technology was a long way off. We were selling tools for millions of dollars to customers like nasa. But despite the conservative clients, our early V.R. software was radically strange. You could program while in our virtual world, and see all the variables not as textual symbols but as virtual objects; there was no source code. I used to wax on about how virtual reality would lead to a new style of “post-symbolic” communication, in which we would make experiences for one another, sharing them directly instead of just describing them.

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/where-will-virtual-reality-take-us?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_020324&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&utm_term=tny_daily_digest&bxid=5bd66dd12ddf9c6194382970&cndid=13267906&hasha=9daa350d41aff482ef70345758ade9d6&hashb=8d9dbc2d50718e70c553f3060d24988afeba31d7&hashc=305e7b751cd4cde167a93ee9770cfcfff72a85daf86fa885c4acc7e91ba511d1&esrc=AUTO_PRINT&mbid=CRMNYR012019