A reader sends this e-mail:

Hey Jake,
 
Coming from a long-time blog reader, I believe this will interest you.
 
VR technology is creeping into the mainstream. With Rift expected to ship this month, it’s highly likely for us to see widespread use as early as this year.
 
The promise of experiencing an immersive virtual environment is great. It’s unprecedented and it’s exciting. But there’s just one massive catch – the way it works is by placing a screen under 15 centimeters from your face. The resultant eye strain will spell disaster.
 
I’m sure that among the people drawn to the appeal of VR, not all of them have severe myopia. If VR works as well as advertised – and tests have been promising – the risk is real that they’ll get into heavy usage of VR daily.
 
To have an edge of blur at 15cm, you’d need about 6.5 diopters of myopia. If someone with mild or no myopia used a VR headset for hours a day, their eyes would inevitably tend towards developing 6.5 diopters of myopia, would it not? I doubt it is safe, at all, for someone with perfect eyesight to use a VR headset. Maybe if they wore plus 6.5D contact lenses. Crazy.
 
Already, interesting side effects from VR use have been observed. These range from nausea/motion sickness to having the virtual image burned into your mind such that it lingers with your eyes closed. A third one is ‘past-pointing’ – where your hand-eye coordination is altered such that if you, say, reach for a glass of water, your hands will miss the glass.
 
Experts aren’t sure what the long-term consequences are, if any. We’ll wait and see, they say. The risks go largely ignored in the wake of the excitement.
 
I’ve just a hunch that this technology will be responsible for significantly accelerating myopia progression in the coming years. And since the mainstream doesn’t realise that overprescription for near work is even a thing – no one will be able to point out why. Thoughts?

I get asked about VR a lot.

Also of note, you’re reading a post that’s part Thai tea caffeine fueled, and part sleep deprived.  It could get a bit weird, in a moment.

So is VR going to add even more to this massive, worldwide vision health crisis?  How is the human visual cortex going to be affected by this entirely unnatural projection onto our retinas?  Are future generations basically going to all be little blind rats, living behind lenses of various sorts for their whole lives?

Little. Blind. Rats.

Truth be told, I don’t know.  I like to dive in and read clinical studies, get real data for a start.  Then I like to self-experiment, supplement third party research with my own observations.  

And I haven’t either seen relevant studies, nor do I own any VR gear.  

Of course looking at how VR works, it’s not a big leap to start fretting about where this is going to take our vision health, fine motor control, and other side effects we haven’t even started to consider.

I’m going to play old-man-Jake here and tell you that I’m going to give VR a pretty wide berth for a start.  Modern life, as far as I’m concerned, is no less a dangerous jungle than our ancestral proper-tiger jungle was.  Except now instead of tigers, the lurking troubles come in form of fast food, Facebook, big pharma, TV, and endless advertising.  Look at that pretty mushroom-of-modern-temptation just like your ancestors would have, don’t assume it’s safe, just because somebody else says so.  Ideally, let other fools have a VR bite first, and see how that turns out.

Housekeeping:  There’s been a definite lack of progress on the video front, of late.  Think of it as part of the R&D parts of @endmyopia, things that get a bit further on the back burner as other details demand more attention.  Also interestingly, both home and office are surrounded by heavy construction lately, and it’s been less than easy to find good places to record without jackhammer background music.  At least that’s the official excuse.

I’ll be in Malaysia starting tomorrow, which could either make things more or less productive.  The camera is packed, though!  There is of course the entirely pointless and semi-secret Instagram if you like to stalk various personal details, and the slightly less off-topic @endmyopia Twitter account is just around the corner from 50k followers.  Because, who could live without all those social media tweets?

See you tomorrow! ;)

Cheers,

-Jake