The Fully Immersive Internet: Experience Influencers in the VR Future

This story is a possible history of the future of the Internet.

The Rig was a highly classified military appliance used in training Special Forces. It had two distinct components:

• A full body recording system that recorded 100% of touch, hearing, eyesight, and smells from a single individual as “360 experience”;
• A playback bodysuit system to replay the digital full-body experience with perfect fidelity to infinite downstream consumers.

While the Rig didn’t record anything “in the head,” — it didn’t record thoughts or emotional state — the recording system picked everything the recordee saw, felt, heard, and smelled.  It even performed a decent facsimile of the recordee’s anxiety, fear, and pain.  Heart rate, sweat, nervous jitters, ticks, the suit recorded it all. 

The Rig’s beta release was technically cumbersome and complicated. The recording suit was bulky. Someone wearing the suit couldn’t move well. It was hot, rubbery, and itchy. The Rig required the military to forward deploy into the operations theater a classified mini-supercomputer running several deep neural nets and a fleet of techops personnel to manage the system.

However, the Rig did effectively produce a full-body physical recording of an on-mission experience.  It captured everything from the sensation of carrying a 100lb back through 120-degree heat to the jolt of fear after hearing an enemy’s gunfire. The mini-supercomputer did its job. It captured original sensations and interpolated and inferred other correlated feelings. The AIs mixed all this data into the recording to make the whole experience seem more “real.”

After the mini-supercomputer finished computing the recording, the computer compressed the files and sent them to military-grade cloud infrastructure.  There it sat until replayed. A single session with the Rig was a breathtaking 45 exabytes in size.  It was so big the military sent the recording off to the cloud provider to upload the files at the datacenter instead of trying to do so over the wire. The finished product was every bit as cumbersome as the Rig itself.  But for this project, money, cloud infrastructure, and disk space were no object.

The Rig’s playback system included a full immersion VR headset with 180-degree vision and a head-to-toe bodysuit.  During playback, a trainee experienced the recorded mission as if it were life.  Later, trainees claimed the playback session felt like they were there, in the theater, taking incoming fire.  The psychological effects were near-real.  The Rig provided a perfect facsimile of the experience without having to send a trainee into danger.  The military claimed they saw a 50% increase in the performance of new special operations personnel on their first deployment and a much higher weed-out of those who would have otherwise had a psychological break in the theater.

The Rig was a massive project success.

The military invested heavily in the Rig.  They forked over vast sums of money to the military contractors and the cloud providers and, in turn, contractors invested heavily in optimizations. The initial mini-supercomputer shrunk until the military could deploy the recording station on the back of a truck.  Then the processing computer shrunk again from the back of a truck to a commodity server stack.  Then it shrunk again as the computation moved up to the military-classified cloud and needed no rig at all.  The system to record a live human in the operating theater still required a whole phalanx of data scientists to train the models and military psychologists to evaluate the recordings, but getting those recordings became cheaper.

The system rapidly became streamlined. Initially, the Rig’s recording suit looked like bulky futuristic power armor, and the playback suit was a whole “tank” of sensors connected to the trainee.  To playback a recording, the trainee put on a colossal headset and climbed into what looked like a big silver tube with padded, human-shaped walls studded with cables, sensors, and things that go beep.  Wearing the system was mildly horrifying. The military contractors figured out how to embed the full-body sensors into a flexible mesh fabric, simplifying recording, and playback, although the helmet continued to be a bulky monstrosity. 

Over time, the Rig became part of all standard military training.
The Rig dropped from a highly classified project deployed into operating theaters to a commoditized system used across the entire military.  Once standardized, the Rig was no longer much of a secret. Once perfected for their use, the military declassified, modified, and released the Rig for civilian use with stern warnings about the psychological effects of unevaluated recordings.

The first civilian companies to market the Rig continued to use it for its intended use, training.  They employed the Rig in training employees in the new Robot-and-Human factory complexes, flying planes and helicopters, and hands-on trades like electricians and plumbers.  They expanded the Rig’s use to law enforcement, firefighting, EMTs, and other dangerous, nerve-wracking, and dirty jobs.  These private companies still employed psychologists to review the Rig’s recording impacts, and machine learning engineers to tweak the learning algorithms.  They performed both the recording and the playback services.

The Rig’s introduction to private enterprise was positive. Human performance in industries using the Rig experienced fewer accidents and happier employees.

Yet the Rig, soup to nuts, was expensive to run, service, maintain, and manage.  Between cloud costs and Rig expertise, recording new training full-body immersion experiences cost a small fortune.  And, law enforcement and firefighters had neither the personnel, the knowledge, or the time to make specialized recordings for the Rig.

The free market democratized the recording side of the equation. Small startups bloomed, partnered with their industries, and specialized in making individual training recordings for specific clientele. These startups recorded fighting fires, taking out crack house dens, and saving heart attack victims. They rented out these recordings with Rig playback suits on their platforms as a bundle for premium prices.   It was a great niche market for a while.  Startups grew into unicorns and made reliable profits.    

Like anything else, the first place new technology proliferates is in the darkest corners of the Internet.

At first, Rig prices were too high a barrier for anyone to access in the open market.  A single Rig playback suit and SWAT training recording combination cost tens of thousands of dollars to play precisely once.  Anyone without corporation-sums of money had to access the Rig playback suit was via theft.

The full-body playback suits with cracked DRM and associated recordings circulated in low-grade, half-working versions on the dark web. 

Incomplete, grainy, and known to cause users seizures, these training experiences gave an adrenaline thrill and possibly an aneurysm.  You too could taste being part of a SWAT team without the danger or save a child from a burning building.

And then your brain melted.  Scientists warned using the Rig Playback without proper psychological support caused permanent damage. That stopped no one with a will and some bitcoin from buying underground recordings and experiencing it for themselves.   

Danube Technologies, the research and development arm of the Danube Corporation, was the first company to bring the Rig out of industrial use to everyone. The original military contractors designed the Rig for recording and replaying experiences from the real world. If designed and programmed right, Danube’s executives thought, the Rig could bring the best entertainment experience known to man. They could bring the Rig’s playback to everyone, streamed live to Rig Playback Suits – marketed as Suits — over the Internet.

After decades of limping forward with virtual reality (VR), with the ugly headsets, the queasiness, and vertigo, the real VR was here.  Danube Technologies gobbled up those older companies for pennies on the dollar. The Danube executives added these companies with their IP and engineers to the Danube overarching corporate portfolio.  Then, Danube set about to perfect both sides of the technology — recording and playback — and make them consumer-ready.

Recording systems, still prohibitively expensive, went into the hands of the entertainment companies.

The Suits went on sale online for Christmas.

The first Suit-enabled shows allowed consumers to participate in reality TV.  As an experiment, Danube management forced the contestants who participated on the reality TV show to wear a recording suit while competing in high-adrenaline challenges. Those “watching” at home could pick their favorite competitors and follow every heart-pounding moment of action – literally.  Elimination meant subscribing to another competitor.  Danube didn’t leave out those without a Suit. Consumers at home could still watch the show streamed in 2D to any of their devices or their smart home wall, but those with Suits got the “full experience.”

The marketing literature of Danube called these recordings “Experiences.”

The first Suit-enabled show was, later, considered the new Survivor.  It was the best reality TV show ever made.  Heart-stopping, panic-inducing, run in circles entertainment, Danube hadn’t invented Must-See TV.  Danube created Must-Experience TV. 

People couldn’t get enough of the Suit. Almost overnight, dozens of Suit-enabled competition shows proliferated.  Cooking shows.  Fashion shows.  Interior-design shows.  Celebrities recorded themselves on the red carpet.  Doctors became concerned about the addictive nature of Experiences, but capitalism marched on.

Danube monetized the Experiences.  A customer could experience the show for “free” (Suits are not free and quite expensive). However, the Experience would cut out periodically to give the customer a full-body commercial experience.  For thirty seconds, the customer would smell the air freshener’s spring-soft scent or enjoy that soft leather interior on that new pickup truck, or feel that paper towel’s absorbency.  Or, a customer could subscribe to the Danube Experience Platform for $9.99 a month to Experience without interruption.     

Once the Suits were commoditized systems in stores – no need to crack suits or steal DRM-cracked training materials for a cheap and possibly brain-melting thrill — Experiences appeared in brand-new dark corners of the Internet.  Always on the bleeding edge of technology, the pornography industry invested in Suit technology quickly after the first significant Reality TV show.  They, too, had the deep pockets to afford the recording equipment.  Experiences swiftly replaced the older and clunkier porn VR and AR systems.  The pornography industry was the first to meld Experiences with robots and robotics for a full “totally immersive world of sensation.”  They made a lot of money.

Meanwhile, technology pressed on.  Miniaturization knows no bounds except the laws of physics.  The recording side of the Rig became cheap enough for individuals with cash to spend.  The rich recorded themselves bungee-jumping off bridges, free-climbing mountains, or driving fast cars on the straightaway.  The recordings made their way to social media, where they were downloaded and Experienced by hundreds of thousands.  They were a sensation, and they were commercial-free.

Jumping on the popularity of home-made Experiences, two college students in a dormitory made the first full-on Suit social media site, Stream.  While the Internet providers screamed about the Suit Experience’s incredible download size, millions swarmed the site. People uploaded Experiences of themselves doing all kinds of things: walking the dog, cleaning their kitchens, and lying outside on the grass in a park on a perfect summer day.  

Welcome to the new Internet.  An Internet one could see, could feel, could hear, and could smell.  Educators discussed how to use the Experiences to teach – back to the Rig’s original core function — and uploaded lectures and labs.  Politicians tried to reach voters through Experience commercials.  Scientists discussed at length the ethics of Experiences and if Experiences were good for humanity or yet another drag. 

But really, people used Experiences for commercials, junk TV, and porn.
Danube, never one to miss a buck, released a product joining recording and playback into the same system.  Now, for one subscription price to the Danube Suit Cloud – an Experience system for automatic processing, compression, and storage of all your experiences – anyone could record themselves doing something and upload it to Stream.  Then, Danube bought Stream for billions.  They promptly integrated their Experience commercial spots for yet another revenue source. 

Stream (a Danube Company) allowed the world to experience the world.  Once recording and playback became near-simultaneous – one could Stream a Stream or Experience an Experience – the world was full of voyeurs.  Experience Influencers were huge.  Millions tuned in to try on the newest fashions, or drive in the latest cars, or walk on the Moon, or whatever Experience Influencers were doing.

The most popular Experiences were Experiences most people could never or would never get on their own.  Not only the lives of the rich and famous.  Or the lives of famous athletes.  Or famous politicians.  The darkest, most frightening experiences drew the most viewers. Drug Experiences. Criminal Experiences.  They streamed, live, on Stream, with plenty of commercial breaks.

Stream did a decent, AI-assisted job of removing the truly violent crime off its network and handing the Experiences with all the appropriate geotagging, facial recognition, device marking, and tracking to law enforcement.  It’s the fuzzier edges of crime that are harder for law enforcement to track and Stream to keep off its network.  Is the life of a Neo-Nazi illegal?  How about someone using drugs? Or a protestor fighting a totalitarian government?  Whose life is not permitted?

Where this story ends is with the most popular Streamer and Experience Influencer of all time — a hacker and cat burglar named L3op4rd. 

He was into Experiences back when hackers cracked them and leaked them on the dark web.  Back before they were cool.  Today, he – and the Internet is pretty sure L3op4rd is a he but who can tell with how he’s rigged his suit? – is the most popular online personality in the world.  He is charismatic.  He is funny. He made burglary an online sport.

L3op4rd only targets the biggest mansions of the world’s wealthiest people.  He’s a man of the people.  He is fighting the oligarchs who rule society.  Once he breaks in, he doesn’t just steal their things. He tags the house with his brand of avant-garde art. 

Will L3op4rd evade the house’s online streaming cameras?  Can he scramble the facial recognition tech and bypass the smart home’s AI?  What will he paint on the living room wall before the cops come?  Who knows? 

Who can tell?

Who can tell if L3op4rd, online famous, Influencing thousands to break into other houses, isn’t just a paid show created by the Danube Corporation?   A Reality TV show creation that looks not like a reality TV show creation at all, pushing the bounds of what is edgy and real, for the home audience sitting in their homes wearing Suits?