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I actually had a Virtual Boy. My father thought it was so cool that it's the only piece of tech, let alone video games, that he ever gave me without my requesting it.

We returned it, because it sucked. It was more than somewhat unsuccessful; it is the paradigm case of overpromising and underdelivering.

The only sweat you'd work up with a Virtual Boy would be after puking because of the induced motion sickness. It was impossible to move around, wasn't designed for that, instead you'd hunch over a table and it would force you to take breaks every fifteen minutes in a futile attempt to prevent waves of nausea from ruining your experience.

Wow, "demonstrably wrong" are incredibly strong words given the lacking counter arguments you provided.

I remember when the virtual boy came out. It was a disaster. From wikipedia: "The Virtual Boy was panned by critics and was a commercial failure, even after repeated price drops."

And the second one, bringing up that one time your dad was annoyed to book a plane ticket. Not much more needs to be said.

What exactly did you demonstrate was wrong with his original take?

I agree, the Virtual Boy was a disaster, but maybe I didn't illustrate my point very well, and that is my fault; I'll give you an upvote to help counteract the downvotes because I probably didn't explain myself correctly.

What I was trying to say that clearly the was some demand for the virtual reality of some kind; I'm sure Nintendo did some level of market research; concurrently, Atari and Sega was also working on VR projects, these demos were pretty popular in expos, so my point was that it's not a recent thing to want to VR in the home.

I disclaimed that me using my dad as an example was anecdata, but (assuming I'm not lying), it does prove the existence of at least one person's demand for such a product. The post I was responding to said specifically "People lived in 1990 and didn't feel that bad to have to call a travel agency to get a ticket", and I was giving a counter-claim to that. The last time I checked, my dad was a person, and did feel "that bad" calling a travel agency. Also, it wasn't "one time", it was throughout most of the 90's, though I mostly remember this from 1995-1997 because I was previously a bit too young to pay much attention to this stuff.

Now, fair enough, I didn't link to studies proving my point, so I probably used the word "demonstrably" incorrectly, and I apologize for any confusion that might have resulted from that.

VR is also not just about recreating irl situations so you can sit at home. There is something deeply satisfying about shit talking with friends in Pavlov and then blowing their brains out with a shotgun only for them to come back 10 seconds later.

>This is also wrong; anecdata, but at least one person (my dad) hated having to call up travel agencies in the 90s to book a plane ticket.

Yeah, and I hate scratching my head when itchy. Doesn't mean an "automatic head stratcher" is the best use of our innovation, or adds anything significant to humanity...

Why does everything have to "add something significant to humanity"?

It's not like "innovation" exists in a vacuum; if I figure out, I dunno, a new motor design for an automatic head scratcher, there's no reason that it can't later be used for something you deem to "add something significant to humanity".

Also, who gets to determine what actually adds to humanity? If you really didn't like scratching your head, or it took you a really long time to scratch your head in the morning, then wouldn't having something automatically do that for you be useful?

Travel websites are an example of something that did solve a problem; despite what you said before, people didn't like having to deal with travel agents (I googled around); they didn't like having to book tickets during office hours, they didn't like how hard it was to compare prices, they didn't like how much of a cut the agents took, etc. Buying tickets online save consumers time, money, and probably helped businesses book flights more easily. Businesses that "add significantly to humanity".

I know you didn't say this, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but I think that the binary mentality that you either are working on "useless" or "revolutionary" things is really harmful. I think it puts a lot of pressure on newbies with the thought that they have to change the world, and they might withdraw from STEM stuff because they don't feel like they're making significant enough contributions.

>Why does everything have to "add something significant to humanity"?

Everything doesn't have to.

A lot should have, though. Most, if possible.

And the reason is opportunity cost.

Ok. I stand by my points; innovation isn't in a vacuum. Plenty of things seem useless initially, or are just built for fun, and turn out to later be incredibly valuable later.

So your argument is as follows:

1. People didn’t mind meeting with travel agencies.

2. Actually people hated meeting with travel agencies. Never mind number 1.

3. Automatic head scratchers are a waste of time.

4. Therefore online travel websites are a waste of time.

innovation doesn't always look like a steam engine or a polio vaccine, with immediate and obvious impact on society.

sometimes innovation looks like 1000 small improvements that only save us 30 seconds of our day, but once they're all built we suddenly have whole hours freed up that used to be taken up by things like spending an hour on the phone with a travel agent

For every 30 seconds the average person saves on misc. Tasks, there are whole minutes spent doom scrolling on social media apps.

So? If I get to pick how I waste my time, then that time is not really wasted.

So, I wonder how much social media use is a real choice. A lot of it feels more analogous the sort of false choice people make when they smoke or self-medicate with over-consumption alcohol.