Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work

by Steven Kotler

VR’s potential as a technology of surveillance and control. “It’s very easy to imagine a company that succeeds in dominating the VR universe44 quickly stockpiling intimate data on not just what you and three billion other people ‘favorite’ but . . . a thousand other details. To do that in real life would be expensive and intrusive. To do that in VR will be invisible and cheap.” Soon VR systems are going to track everything from eye gaze to vocal tone to—as DARPA-style biometrics get further integrated—neurochemistry, hormones, brainwaves, and cardiac coherence. “This comprehensive tracking of your behavior inside these worlds,”45 continues Kelly, “could be used to sell you things, to redirect your attention, to compile a history of your interests, to persuade you subliminally, to quantify your actions for self-improvement . . . and so on. If a smartphone is a surveillance device we voluntarily carry in our pocket, then VR will be a total surveillance state we voluntarily enter.”