Virtual Reality: Danger Ahead?

Virtual reality is an environment in which computers create the effect of a world which seems almost completely real to the people in it.

Virtual reality is the technology that allows users to interact with computer-simulated images and some day may offer getting into make-believe worlds. In today's virtual worlds people can do a lot of things and their advantages — both real and potential — are clear. Doctors practise operations on different parts of human body, students learn some geography and history by "walking" into the places they are interested in, tourists take far-away trips to other countries etc.

Critics of VR say that this sort of technology without careful regulation will be nothing more than a high-tech instrument for spreading violence, pornography and advertising. Already, they say, a lot of VR programmes are exercises in killing rather than in thinking. Many scientists see some truth in this. Some psychologists warn that for the young and mentally ill virtual trips could be very dan­gerous because after such trips they mix up the real world with the virtual one. As virtual models that scientists design become more and more realistic, people may start believing these models to be true and forgetting to go to the real world to see if it is really so. In science, this tendency can lead to wrong conclusions. In training it could result -in unpreparedness for risky situations. The pilot trained on a plane model that is realistic, but not true, for example, would be ready for a virtual flight, but not a real one.

Perhaps the biggest question of all is what virtual reality will mean for human ethics and morality. There is a danger that traditional morality will break down in virtual worlds. So, what is the final word on virtual reality? It can be a curse or a blessing. In the end this new technology will be what we make it.