We’re at the virtual reality tipping point… even if the headsets are still bulky and awkward
In the early 1990s, many people gawked at ugly and bulky mobile phones, unable to see just how much they’d change the face of communication. In this piece, Kaga Bryan argues we’re at the same point now with virtual reality, and he’s having a bit of déjà vu.
It’s 1994. My stepdad is in a department store, having a serious conversation into an exceptionally bulky mobile phone. I was about 13 at the time and remember vividly as the two girls at the cosmetic counter were mimicking him. To be fair, it was a highly unusual sight. It was “random” as their modern counterparts might say. Here was a man having an everyday conversation from the middle of a department store! Not at home. Not in a phone booth. It was a public display of incredibly odd behaviour.
Five years later, I was in my final year at high school enjoying a friend’s party when a Nokia 5110 rang loudly from my pocket. “Yuppie!” yelled the crowd. And a yuppie I would have been if I could have personally afforded such a device at that time, but it was my mum’s.
I don’t need to continue the story much further as you’re probably reading this on a smartphone or, at the very least you own one of the 15 million handsets in Australia.
