Deceptive realities
In 2014 Facebook acquired a quickly growing virtual reality (VR) company, which was gaining popularity as one of the Kickstarter platform’s most promising projects. At the time, critics accused Mark Zuckerberg of being a bored billionaire in need of new toys. Years later, Facebook Australia’s head of technology, entertainment and connectivity, Jason Juma-Ross, tells us that the social media giant had always seen Oculus and VR as the next mode of communication and connection. Juma-Ross says just as internet communication has graduated from text to images to video, VR will come next: “One of the most empathetic and immediate ways that you can communicate with somebody is by having them be in your world.”
In early May, Oculus released the Oculus Go in Australia, promising to bring together the immersive quality from its flagship Rift model and the convenience of supplementary mobile-powered VR experiences such as Samsung Gear and Google Cardboard. Beyond VR, Facebook’s technology team has been obsessed with blurring the lines between fiction and reality over the past year. The company introduced a series of augmented reality (AR) features to both its Facebook and Instagram platforms, as well as an open source ‘AR Studio’ for developers to create 3D objects to place in the real world.
catches up with Juma-Ross, a self-described ‘VR nerd’, to find out more about Facebook’s technological curiosities, where the platform’s intentions point
