Plato's Moose Cave

After reading all of these different passages on virtual reality, I find it interesting that VR hasn't affect popular culture yet. A lot of these scholars wrote about the uses and concerns of VR in the early 90s and over a decade later it still hasn't really come to fruition. The only thing I can think of that VR really has excelled in is with the medical fields.  With the way technology has advanced since the early 90s you would think that VR would have been one of the things to come out it. However, I feel like at this time no one is really interested in creating a virtual world to rival reality. 

In my opinion, the other mediums we have now (internet, television, etc) are already turning millions of people into couch potatoes. Society has made it so if you don't want to leave your house, or room for that matter, you don't have to. So if someone is already capable of furthering themselves from "reality," why would they want to go any farther. There are computer programs such as Second-Life, that make it possible to create a character of yourself and dive into other worlds. So this Cave that Plato suggests we live in is already there. People are able to enjoy the shadows with the mediums we already have without VR. 

I think that VR hasn't come to fruition yet because there are a lot of restrictions in its capabilities. Like Zettl points out, the motion and movement is limited through hand and head movements from a fixed place. With the Internet, you can move about anywhere in the world now. To have to stay in one area, such as your basement, or even worse a place outside of the home, would be extremely burdensome. I agree when he says, "we watch rather than enter the displayed environment."