From: jbbarile@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Jason Blue Barile)
Subject: Re: CULTURE: Twin Palms-- errr, I mean Wild Palms.
Date: Wed, 19 May 1993 15:02:46 GMT
Organization: Vanderbilt University School of Engineering, Nashville, TN, USA


Wouldn't you know it, the press has struck again.  Tuesday night in Nashville,
after Wild Palms, the 10:00pm news showed part 3 of their "Virtual Reality"
series.  In the grand old "jump on the bandwagon" style, the report featured
teenagers saying "I'm addicted" while showing people blow up in Virtuality and
had a few students at Georgia Tech saying that "somebody will find a way to
abuse VR just like we've abused television."  

My question is this, if the general public gets this kind of double-dose intro
to VR (Wild Palms and violent video games) what kind of future does VR have in
the home or workplace?  I'm fairly ticked that the press feels free to bend the
nightly report to go along with the ideas in WP (VR is bad, etc...) and that
they think they can sway the public.  Maybe it was just bad reaearch on their
parts, but even so, what chance will VR stand if we keep letting people who
really don't know that much about VR introduce it to the public? 

-Jason Barile