The photo went around the world: an expanse of people with no gaze, their eyes enraptured by a technological mask, immersed in another reality while in the real world, a few centimeters away from them, one of the most famous and influencers of the earth, Mark Zuckerberg, who knows something about virtual realities.
It happened last Sunday at Barcelona during the Mobile World Congress and all those people discovered only later, first through Zuckerberg's Facebook wall and then from all the sites in the world, that they had been alongside the man who created the social network with over a billion subscribers . “Virtual reality is the platform of the future. It will change our lives,” read the name of the panel organized by Samsung. Zuckerberg smiles in the photo: a reassuring smile as if to say "don't be afraid, trust me, I know what I'm doing, enter this new world with me".
Instead that photo, that smile, those faces without eyes, have become a boomerang for Mr Facebook: 8.500 comments under the image plus those, incalculable, on personal bulletin boards, other social networks, blogs and news sites. Most of which terrified of what they just saw. That image has become an allegory of a future that nobody wants: a future in which the masses are relegated behind a screen in virtual worlds. And smiling puppeteers, the only ones with uncovered faces, wander around invisible to each other.
Too apocalyptic? Can be. But that photo cannot fail to evoke scenarios alla Matrix. Or the Orwellian commercial by Apple for the launch of the Mac in 1984. Or the obese space cruisers of the Wall-E of Pixar. And the examples of dystopian futures could continue, from the British serial Black Mirror to Ernest Cline's novel Player One (it will become a Spielberg film) in which virtual reality has collapsed the society we know today.
The object presented on stage in Barcelona was the viewer Samsung Gear VR, created by the Korean company in collaboration with Facebook (it's the same one that the Sampdoria players had worn the night before before the match against Inter): "We have entered an era in which everyone will have the power to share his experiences as he lived them”, commented the CEO of Facebook. “VR will be the new social platform where you can share these sensations, these movies that will give the impression of being there with whoever shot them. Samsung has the best mobile hardware and Facebook has the best software with Oculus." In fact, Oculus, the brand that is "behind" Samsung's Gear VR and the viewer still in development Oculus Rift, was bought by Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion.
“Facebook has a new dynamic streaming technology that will significantly improve the image quality of the video presentation you watched tonight. And in the coming weeks, it will stream it to Samsung's Gear VR." In short, for Zuckerberg the union between theOLED screen produced on a large scale by Samsung and the technology owned by Facebook. “We have also already created a new generation of virtual reality apps – explains Zuckerberg – to build the best VR experience in the world. We are proud to work together with Samsung, the best is yet to come”. The best, or the worst?
