Virtual Reality Backpacking?

Interesting read Doug.

This is happening as we speak, at least in the form of digital representation taking precedence over physical reality. I work with young people, I see this play out on a regular basis.

Example: A student creates a beautiful art object in my class. I tell them to hurry up and take it home, I don’t want something to happen to it…But I notice students are increasingly unconcerned with the physical fate of the objects they create. It eventually dawned on me: The photograph of the object that will be shared via social media is more important to the student than the object itself. If a student took the object home, who would see it? Their lives exist increasingly in the digital realm- this is becoming the “real” space, the important space. Consider the value of NFTs in this context. While it may seem silly, the NFT is in fact more “real” to many people than an actual object they will never interact with.

I suffer the same pull as an artist. Much of the public will never see my physical work. But if I post images…the “likes” begin to flow, in many ways giving more weight to the digital representation than the actual object.

What does this have to do with backpacking?

Capturing a beautiful sunset on camera, yet being hurried and far from present during the entire process. People clearly writing the trip report in their heads as the trip is unfolding; creating a metanarrative that pulls one away from the present. You can witness this in the self-consciousness so apparent in so much of social media.

At a later date it will be the representation of the physical that gets meditated upon, with more mindful time spent interacting with filters, image editors, and pixels while getting the image/story ready to be shared. And again, the digital representation of the experience is what gets the validation, the “likes”, shifting us increasingly further away from an in-person, shared physical reality and into interaction primarily through the Metaverse, one baby step at a time.

Interesting read and comments

I’ve played games like Quake or Myst where you walk around a digital landscape

Now, I think about it while hiking.  Looking at GPS map and seeing where I’m going.  It’s like I’m playing a computer game.  Hiking is a derivative of a game.  I don’t need to do games any more, I can just do hikes and look at my progress on the GPS.

Or, you could make a map for a game based on a real hiking trail.  Rather than designing an imaginary place.  Especially, when a hike circles around and you can see where you were a while ago, or where you’re going.

In a game, you can save a position, continue walking from there, then change your mind and instantaneously restart at the saved position.  Or jump forward.  While hiking, I think about future and past positions and think about how they currently exist – in my mind I’m instantaneously jumping forward or backward, just like a computer game.

I can see why you would want to post a picture of a creative work on a website.  For example MYOG stuff here.  I don’t get NFTs.  A block chain can guarantee a digital image is genuine, but so what?  I can see wanting to make a creative work visible to other people on the internet, but the fact that it can be proven who “owned it” doesn’t seem valuable.  If I could charge people for looking at the creative work that would be something, but I don’t think that’s the purpose of NFTs.

Money is sort of like NFTs.  It’s value is what other people believe it is.

I must be an old, inflexible person.

Money is sort of like NFTs.  It’s value is what other people believe it is.
I must be an old, inflexible person.

Jerry nailed it, and me!  Wisner! Is almost certainly correct about young people in today’s digital world.  I however, still revel in simply standing there, motionless, observing the landscape.  The wind in trees.  The Hawk catching a squirrel. The family of feral hogs coming down the trail and filing past 3 feet from me as I stand motionless. “I am a tree…nothing to fear here”.

To each his own, but I would not trade the “here and now” experience of hiking for anything.  So much so that I take very few pictures…doing so takes me out of the moment.

Hikikomori comes to mind.

I have personally witnessed the growth of this here in the states and the recent COVID virtual learning environment has accelerated it. We took millions of young people and made them interact with the world through the computer for the better part of two years. Talk about a social experiment; many young people have not recovered. Social anxiety is through the roof, as is isolation-seeking depression, all interaction with the world happening through the computer. Gaming plays a huge part in it. (Don’t get me started on what our response to the pandemic has done to kids).

Jerry, you’re pretty accurately describing the gaming world. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has stunning, open landscapes to explore. It’s quite easy to get sucked in. For a balanced individual, it’s just a game. For someone with social anxiety and depression, of which there are now millions, it can become an alternate world, more enjoyable than the real one.

This is virtual backpacking. Untold numbers of people (primarily young) are already interacting with “nature” exclusively in this virtual world. It’s quite strange connecting with my students in this way. When I mention I know some of the games they play, their eyes light up and we trade stories about beautiful sunsets, serene villages, misty forests….

Thing is, for most, those are the only sunsets and forests they can reference, real or not. And for many it’s more than enough.

I haven’t read the article, but…isn’t virtual reality a sensory deprived reality? It emphasizes sight and sound, but the other three senses are missing. In that regard it’s an impoverished “reality”. It’s true that computer screens do the same thing–all screens do. And so it may be that people are most comfortable with diminished worlds, which is where they spend most of their time. I suppose folks enjoy fast forwarding through the boring parts, or the parts they don’t understand, or the parts that annoy them in their virtual world. Ultimately our personalities will come to reflect this. Hard to maintain a simple relationship if you think ‘reality’ allows you to just skip past what you don’t like.

David Brooks has an interesting op ed in the NYTimes about the rise of nasty behavior in all walks of life. Maybe our virtual expectations have much to do with this. when you can'[t have things exactly the way you want in the real world, some respond by exploding in anger and demanding the world about them change to match their demands. The on line world does.

I used to work as a world designer and AI systems designer on open-world exploration video games (like Grand Theft Auto). From a realistic perspective on how long it would take to get to the point where VR surpasses or equals  reality, it’s going to take a massive leap in computing power and human-machine I/O to get there. Like orders and orders, upon exponential orders of magnitude beyond anything we know of today. It would also take AI systems that create the content as apposed to humans, since such content creation is the bulk of the man-hours spent on video games.

But, as long as reality sucks enough for the user, it doesn’t take much to create a virtual world that’s more appealing. We surpassed that threshold decades ago. LOL

But, as long as reality sucks enough for the user, it doesn’t take much to create a virtual world that’s more appealing. We surpassed that threshold decades ago. LOL

I think this is the crux! Impoverished experience vs. reality or not, it only has to be marginally more interesting than the world you live in. For so many this is not a high bar to set, unfortunately. I’ve had too many candid conversations with young people where they admit as much.

“From a realistic perspective on how long it would take to get to the point where VR surpasses or equals  reality, it’s going to take a massive leap in computing power and human-machine I/O to get there.”

Yeah, this is addressed in the article. He talks about decades in the future. We do seem to be heading in that direction, though, which may be sad for an old person like me, but probably (certainly?) won’t be seen with the same downsides by younger or future generations.

In some ways I already participate in something like this with my bike trainer. I watch a video of a ride in, say, France while I ‘participate’ in the ride by peddling away in my workout room in my house.

It’s not VR, but the iFit interface to exercise equipment is pretty nice.  I’ve “hiked” the Chilkoot trail in Alaska, hiked down to the Colorado and back to the rim in the Grand Canyon, and summitted Mt Kilimanjaro, Mt Fuji, and Mt Baldy.  It makes exercising much more fun – the machine automatically changes resistance based on the terrain and then they throw interval training in on top of it.  After I finish a series of 12 workouts based in Costa Rica, I’m going to enjoy 18 workouts to hike to Everest Base Camp.  There’s a ton of variety and if the trainer/guide becomes too annoying you can just mute them.  No – you don’t get the sounds or smells of the locale, but the visual is much better than looking at a series of LED’s representing hills on the screen.

Maybe when I get too old to backpack or even go outdoors, VR hiking will be a good thing. Until then, I much prefer the hot, cold, wet, sweat, blisters, aching muscles, dirt, much… etc…

As far as VR “equaling or surpassing” reality…come on. think of having a simple meal in a restaurant with your friends. You won’t actually be able to smell or taste or chew and swallow actual food in VR. At best, you could meet with your friends in virtual space..but that would essentially be VR Zoom. What would be the point of donning all the headgear?

How would anyone shake hands in VR? Or embrace an old girlfriend? Everyone else is disembodied in VR. To match or exceed reality, VR would have to conjure up your old lover in the flesh for one more fling, complete with how she or he feels and smells and tastes. I don’t think it’s possible for your old flame to be in two places at the same time. So it can’t ever happen, and won’t.

Or imagine going for a swim in VR. Simple enough. There you are, awkwardly gesturing in air as you pretend to do some laps. How do you coordinate a kick with a stroke? How do you experience the feeling of weightlessness in water? How do you get wet in VR? How do you float horizontally? You don’t. You can’t. For VR to match or exceed reality, it would have to provide a lap pool for you to enter: a lap pool conjured up in your living room. Ain’t gonna happen. wouldn’t be prudent. Ask anyone who ever had a waterbed spring a large leak.

And anyway, why not just go to a lap pool?

If you accept sensory deprivation and consider flailing your arms in the air to exceed actually taking a swim in a pool, then yes. VR for you will one day equal or exceed reality. On condition that you live in a greatly, greatly reduced reality.

I think those programs on exercise bikes and such are a great thing. I’m not sure if there are newer ones that encase your head in a screen. These do not match or exceed reality, or come close.

Reminds me of a song;

These things that are pleasin’ you
Can hurt you somehow

Desperado
Why don’t you come to your senses?
You’ve been out ridin’ fences
For so long now
Oh, you’re a hard one
But I know that you got your reasons
These things that are pleasin’ you
Can hurt you somehow

To be fair not everyone has even vaguely ready access to relatively safe nature. (with other humans being the primary danger). Be thankful that you do. I suspect many of Craig’s students may not be so lucky.

We have a little 2 year old up the street. He’s ready to go! Christmas before last when he was around 1 he was asked what he wanted for Christmas and he promptly and firmly answered…. Puddles!  So that’s his nickname for us. Saw him yesterday as Izzy was building to a strong Gale raining sideways and blowing like hell in his foul weather gear and boots all exposed skin glistening wet. Out in it and fully absorbed! An inspiring 2 year old. Wonder if he’ll be giving more than a nod to any virtual games?

Such an interesting conversation…

@Wisner – I teach digital art and ironically my students seem to really value when their work becomes physically manifested as a framed print, a 3D print, cut vinyl stickers, or a Risograph poster/zine. I’ve had one kid ask me about NFTs.

I think BOTW is a wonderful game and I have thoroughly enjoyed exploring that world. It is the closest analogue to “virtual backpacking” I have experienced. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in this topic or anyone who enjoys gaming at all. Easily one of my top five games of all time.

@Jerry – I did some work for the local museum here in 2010 and spent some time with their curator of contemporary art. We discussed the reproducibility of digital art one day while considering a digitally projected piece. The artist had sealed the playback device (I think it was a small computer like a Raspberry Pi?) in a block of epoxy in an effort to make the piece difficult to reproduce in a manner similar to a painting on canvas. Aren’t NFTs partially an attempt to make that possible? I honestly don’t know, I have been too busy to really look into what they are.

Regarding kids these days and real experiences, I have been surprised to learn one of the largest clubs at my school (a high school) is the outdoor club. They typically go on 3 trips per year and car camp then hike. I may get involved in this as we come out of this blasted pandemic. Many of my favorite students are in the club. My point is that there are still many young people interested in interacting with the richness of the real world. There is hope :)

Until they can capture the sense of altitude, I’m not sure VR will do it for me when it comes to backpacking.  The visuals are only part of the equation, along with that sense of being higher in the world, far from the madding crowd, and the peace of an evening at a lonely lake.  Somehow, that’s not going to happen with my head wrapped in electronic gear.

That said, I have ridden parts of the Tour de France on a stationary bicycle in the gym, and that was more fun than riding a stationary bike in the gym and either staring at a read-out of data or watching someone else watch Fox News…

@Matthew, hope is not lost at all. One of the things that makes ceramics popular is the fact that it is 100% hands-on and product oriented, and by many measures, about as anti-tech as you can get (doesn’t get much more old timey than clay and fire). Hard to say that for much of anything in our education system these days; most kids have not produced a physical product in…? We don’t even print essays anymore. That said, I’m noticing the increasing slide towards the digital life that I mention, even in my class. It’s generational but it’s not just kids, adults have paved the way and provided the tools and access.

I still find that access to wilderness is highly, highly class based. To assume that kids have endless alternatives to the virtual/online world is simply incorrect. Some kids, yes. I suspect that many people don’t have an accurate picture of how many kids live in poverty and what the world of experiences available to them (or lack thereof) looks like.

I think it can be easy to forget just how far tech has come in our lifetimes, and it isn’t going to stop any time soon. I, for one, don’t doubt that tech can solve issues like capturing the sense of altitude or embracing others or adding in our other senses (taste, smell, which is already being tested), etc. to make VR seem more and more like ‘real life’. We’ll all be dead (or the majority of us) when that happens, but it’s going to happen, regardless of how hard Grumpy Man! (a new Marvel Universe character) rails against it.

I also think that some responses are looking at VR as it is today to immediately dismiss the thought of what it might be tomorrow. When you grow up with a certain tech it easily becomes ubiquitous within that generation (facebook and cell phones are a great example of this). Add in Craig’s point about how substantially lacking far too many lives are today (and I certainly believe that isn’t ever going to be solved) and it isn’t a far stretch at all for me to think that the possibility of a VR-lived life isn’t some crazy idea. I’m not saying it will happen, I’m just saying that it’s certainly a viable possibility for large swaths of the future population.

The scariest part of this possible future, to me, is what happens to the actual world in such a future. If you can go backpacking, and feel like you’re backpacking, in VR, there’s no need for all the natural beauty we currently have. Large corporations/wealthy investors have been trying to destroy our natural places of beauty and wonder for profit for a long time, as we all know. There are times when I think some of the dystopian novels and movies might not be all that ridiculous anymore. I think we’ve been slowly heading in that direction for some time. But then again, I’m a pessimist and a cynic, so I can only hope I’m way off base.

VR inherently offers a disembodied experience. I mentioned earlier the experience of swimming. It’s impossible while on dry land to get into a position where you could coordinate your legs and arms and entire body to perform strokes. think of ice skating: how could you ever perform the leaps and turns and landing on ice…off ice? Or skiing: your body moves differently on skis going downhill at high speeds. No amount of high tech could fool your body into imagining it’s racing down a hill when in fact you’re sitting down or standing still.

Actual reality is immediate and often unpredictable. VR is inherently mediated and completely programmed. As such, as a non climber I could free climb El Capitan on VR, knowing that when I fell, all would be well. To free climb El Cap in real life, I would have to have done thousands of climbs prior and learned the ropes, so to speak; I would have had to undergo an apprenticeship. And I’d know that death is a real possibility. This makes for an entirely different experience. Again, even a more advanced VR (I still think there are hundreds of unsurmountable limits to this in terms of rivaling reality) can only ever offer a diminished reality. Even the experience of disappointment with reality, of not getting what you want immediately and all the other ways we crash and burn in real life is essential in forming a mature human being. VR offers instant gratification and risks making people infantile, in a way.

I worked with a young man who made music via sampling. One day I was commenting on an orchestral theme song that I like. IT’s pretty complex. He snickered and said that he could compose something as complex easily. He doesn’t read music or play an instrument. He somehow thought that ALL music is downloaded. Of course he knew that people played instruments. but he thought that he could compose a complex orchestral piece by sampling existing pieces, and had trouble telling the difference with actual playing and composition. He had no use for the long labor of learning an instrument and music theory and reading notes. I found that upsetting, actually. In a way I thought it was a form of loss of reality. Violence in VR or in games has no real consequences; one can indulge violence with no harm to others. If one were to spend hours a day doing this while growing up, I wonder about the consequences in real life. Without having to experience others’ real pain and suffering and your own sense of guilt and regret at harming others; and if you have a hard time telling the rules of VR from those of real life…if you live in that infantile state…there’s a problem.

@wisner

I hear you. I know that access to outdoors correlates to socioeconomic factors. I teach at a Title I school in a program funded by desegregation funds. The student body is 96% BIPOC. Maybe the thirst for the outdoors that surprises me is due to a lack of exposure/access.

I’m derailing the conversation here talking about my personal experience as a teacher. My point has been to share my experience where I have been pleasantly surprised how many young people value firsthand, real experiences or digital experiences that integrate real world components.

Oh and then there’s the FRC robotics team I was mentoring before the pandemic started. Those kids built a huge robot from scratch for completion. I don’t have enough time/energy for that right now but I hope to get involved with the team again in the future.

Meanwhile, millions upon millions of people are literally addicted to living life through this very same “impoverished reality” and diminished experience, only it takes place on comparatively primitive flat screens plastered in front of their faces, a technological interaction that does not even rival what VR can potentially offer.

“I’m derailing the conversation here talking about my personal experience as a teacher.”

Not at all. IMO it’s various perspectives from various experiences/walks of life that add to such a conversation, not detract from it.

I’m sure we’ve all had some amazingly realistic dreams. Would/could VR be sort of like dreaming?

Could that end up being a nightmare?

I’m reminded of driverless cars. Recall that we were moments away from them taking over the streets. It turns out that the ‘simple’ task of driving a car is beyond what computers can reliably do. VR ‘matching or exceeding’ reality is far more difficult than that.

I think many have a grand belief–quasi religious in some instances–in the capabilities of technology to outperform humans and the natural environment. Some believe that machines will become conscious for example. So far, machines don’t even have the awareness of an ant. they have none at all. They’ve never had any sort of experience. They don’t know if they’re alive or dead. They don’t ‘know'[ anything. Hard to fathom how they will outperform humans and nature.

Jeffrey contemplates another BPL thread…. :-)

What’s so real about this VR?
Can’t even make a driverless car!
Don’t want no virtual stream,
The idea seems obscene!
I’ll stick to romping where the wild things are!

Now get off my lawn!