Virtual Reality and Data (Part 1)

A National Security Perspective

Virtual Reality (VR), often projected as a future state of current tech improvisation, is, on the contrary, one of the earliest tech experiments of previous century. It’s a product of the Postwar phase, which in many ways, was haunted by the fear of mind control and counter-control obsessions! It was a time when on one hand, the psychologists were experimenting with their ‘controlled’ feedback methods, behaviourists were formulating and propagating their behaviour modification theories, and the cybernauts of the Valley (backed by the US military) were designing and developing digital realities in their labs and novelists/sci-fi writers were painting those wild imaginations with the metallic flavour of modern paranoia (for ordinary people), all at the same time! If those plans would have succeeded, the dystopian tech future would have arrived by now!

So, what happened then? What stopped such well-laid-out plans halfway?

Well, one can say that the Virtual Reality plans faced a reality check. The fuel to run the engine was missing! In the absence of mass reach of the internet and Data, the attempts to produce a low-cost, blockbuster version of VR products could not succeed! While on one side, Virtual Reality, as an idea and product, was itself in its immature state, on the other side, the perfect ‘fertility’ of human minds, their massive ‘engagement’ on screens, and needed universal ‘mindset’ shift cum acceptance, was entirely absent. A behavioural change process (which lasted a few decades) with enormous strategic patience was needed to reach the state we see today!

“VR scientists are the illusionists of science; we’re honest when we tell you we’re fooling you, and you should take us seriously when we point out that we’re not the only ones.”

(Jaron Lanier, “Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality,” 2017)

To probe the limits of present-day Virtual Reality gadgets and their abilities to measure human imaginations, we must first explore the real fuel that runs these ‘Imagineering’ platforms and VR engines!

The Idea of ‘Data’

Can the platforms that run behavioural algorithms on people’s screens in an ‘auto’ mode, manipulate the choice of their ‘users’ with precisely targeted dopamine content, see the ‘privacy’ of their consumers as a commodity that can be bought or sold to anonymous entities, facilitates networks of online scammers and shifts the entire burden of ‘responsibility/accountability’ on their subscribers (on the click of a button) and for whom any ‘intervention’ in this process by the democratically elected governments/ institutions, is a violation to their ‘rights’ to leverage this exclusive edge, could ever be inspired to make some behavioural changes in their approach to Data, Privacy, and Rights of their Users? These were perhaps some of the big questions before the drafters of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2023 of Bharat, which is now an act.

“This law will start an era of responsible and accountable behaviour by data fiduciaries to maintain and protect citizen’s digital privacy” said Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

The debate around Data, Privacy, and Protection is long and interesting. Over the last few years, several jargons related to the idea of ‘Data’ were launched, and many have attempted to equate the term with the ‘New Oil’ and ‘New Gold’ kind of abstract definitions to highlight its ever-growing value/influence in our life!

One of the biggest ironies of ‘Data’ is that it often comes from people who have been told that they are going to be obsolete or replaced by the same machines that this Data fuels, and yet they are addicted/trapped to an extent, that they keep feeding these systems, pleasantly and voluntarily! According to some rough estimates, on average, routine internet users produce some 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day (a quintillion is equal to number 10 raised to the power 18).

“The fate of information in the typically American world is to become something which can be bought or sold”

–Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)

Data is ‘Power’

Back in 2021, at the World Economic Forum (WEF) gathering, Russian President Vladimir Putin highlighted the digital giants’ increasing intervention in the social, economic, and political systems of the world, and he mentioned that: “In some areas, they are de facto competing with states.” Then he went a step further and asked the gathering, “Where is the border between successful global business, in-demand services, and big data consolidation and the attempts to manage society at one’s own discretion, and in a tough manner, replace legal democratic institutions and essentially usurp or restrict the natural right of people to decide for themselves how to live, what to choose and what position to express freely?”

These are undoubtedly the dominant questions of this century. And today, it seems that words like Data and Big Data have become some of the biggest fallacies of our time, more deceptive than Russian Maskirovka itself! Ask a normal user of the internet what’s the meaning of these popular terms like Data and Big Data, and they will reply promptly ‘Information,’ without realizing that it is this Data cum information which is capable of electing the governments, destabilizing the political system, crashing the businesses/markets, disrupting the socio-economic environment, and winning the battles (not just of narration but physical too)!

In a nutshell, today the idea of Data has become a synonym for ‘Power,’ the source of unlimited/unrestricted Power! And to know where this power currently resides and who controls it, one needs to go no further but to see the list of the world’s top 10 tech giants, and their home countries (and there is not a single Indian IT company in that list)!

Now the question is if data is Power, then some amount of thrill, hallucination, and control it must have produced! So, what does a mix of all that look like, and where is the Real playground?

Virtual World (आभासी दुनिया)

The word ‘Virtual’ means आभासी in Hindi. Something that one can sense and interact with but which does not exist in any physical form. Now the question is how can one perceive or sense something that doesn’t exist?

There are two possible ways/approaches that exist (except addictive drugs) to sense the Virtual World: One is via gadgets and devices as propagated by the Western world, and another is through ancient and timeless practices like yoga and meditation that belong to Bharat.

Western Approach (Open Eyes, Closed Mind)

“People’s perceptions are filtered through their emotions; they tend to interpret the world according to what they want to see. Feed their expectations, manufacture a reality to match their desires, and they will fool themselves.”

(American author Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War)

Western approach to the Virtual World is often reflected in the smart gadgets and devices we see around, from smartphones to VR headsets/glasses to the whole ecosystem of the online world. All these tech improvisations attempt to offer a prescription of some reality, mixed with pleasure, entertainment, and fun, in a highly simulated environment (like an improvised version of Skinner Box), which slowly starts inducing a bit of doubt, mistrust, and moral weakness to their consumers and ultimately reduces their intellect and imaginations to an extent that even a small electronic gadget in their hand, appear them more superior to themselves!

Why such an approach is necessary? Because a human mind with its cognitive abilities/characteristics, can never surrender to a prescribed and forced tomorrow! He will ask questions, seek answers, use his ‘Free Will,’ and trade a path of his own (something not fit for their future visuals of control). That’s why they have based their approach on a simple notion – “Control people’s perceptions of reality, and you control them!”

Cyberdelics and Cyberpunks – Some Background

Back in the 1990s, while presenting the demo of his Virtual Reality Glove, called the ‘Data Glove,’ Jaron Lanier, the inventor of VR, said: “Well this is our virtual reality glove, it’s called the data glove and the idea is that you can put on this glove and the glove lets you feel a world that doesn’t exist,” then he put on his VR headset called ‘eyephone’ and said: “these are the special glasses called the eye phones that you put on and when you put them on you’re seeing inside an imaginary world instead of inside the physical world,” so the idea is that “by wearing computerized clothing right over your sense organs you transport your sensory system into a reality that can be of any description.”

In its initial phases, VR (Virtual Reality) was largely seen as an alternative to LSD kind of psychedelic drugs. In countries like the USA, there existed an impression that VR clothing (gloves, eyephones, and data suits) and gadgets designed to offer the same sensory response, pleasure, and experiences that LSD offers, or something that one can feel during the Lucid Dreaming! Several research papers have been published to highlight the commonalities between the two- LSD and VR.

American psychologist and a leading advocate for LSD, Timothy Leary famously argued that ‘cyberdelics’ – the fusion of psychedelic drugs and cyberculture – could reprogram the human mind! In the 1980s he became the spokesperson of the ‘Cyberdelic counterculture,’ whose followers called themselves ‘Cyberpunks’ as they were philosophical promoters of personal computers (PC), internet, and immersive virtual reality (VR). Leary went to the extent that once he proclaimed that the “PC is the LSD of the 1990s” and changed his popular phrase “turn on, tune in, drop out” to “turn on, boot up, and jack in. .”

The creator of the first VR experiment, Jaron Lanier, also highlighted this aspect in his book “Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality (2017)”: “VR is sometimes compared to LSD, but VR users can share a world objectively, even if it’s fantastical, while LSD users cannot…it will be like riding a bike, not a roller-coaster ride.”

It is interesting that some of the future plans of Silicon Valley’s leading voices sound more like the SMI2LE vision (an acronym for space migration, intelligence increase, and life extension) of Timothy Leary! And today, if someone searches for VR kind of stuff online, he/she will end up receiving different psychedelic visual compilations (in music and animation video forms), with titles like “Live LSD simulation” or some XYZ “trip” experiences, etc!

To sum up, this is the overall Western idea of the ‘Virtual World,’ which is packaged and advertised as VR products!

Is it wise to let a limited idea or narrow vision dictate the course of future technology? There exists a completely different approach to Virtual World, and it belongs to Bharat.

Part 2: The Bhartiya Approach