What ever happened to Virtual reality ?

I've been thinking about Virutal reality recently. I realise that a long time ago ( the late 80s ) Virtual reality and the internet emerged about the same time. Initally there where both technological phenomena, they appeared to the general public as the technological zeitgeist*.
So why did the internet go on to be such an important technology and virtual reality has all but ( nearly said virtually ) disappeared?

I think I might lay the blame on Jaron Lanier the Tim berners lee of VR. for it was he ( Jaron L. ) that created the highly poetic term 'virtual reality'. Not that it was his fault entirely the previous term was 'artificial reality'. Either term has the R word ( reality ), and this had two problems. Firstly people know what reality is like, it doesn't have any lag and the resolution from where I am sitting terrific. By using the R word we get people overly exited, you get people who have never tried using VR wondering if VR was going to be so real that you might slip into a VR and not notice.

Well if you had never written and email you might start to wonder if using e-mail might be so like writing a letter that you might not notice you had written and e-mail with all the problems that might bring... Thats the problem with metaphors people bring a lot of baggage with them.

The internet on the other had was a wonderfully blank term. People never understood the internet until they had used it. We used to work near one of the first cyber cafes ( remember them ) called cyberia. I remember walking passed them day and night seeing people checking the whole thing out for the first time, you could breath the excitement.

If Tim Berners Lee or some other random visionary had called the internet 'All human knowledge' or something suitably catchy, if some SiFi author had created an reputation on computer that you magically stroked and knew the answer to any question you had in your mind ( are you listening Willam) or they had something similar as a plot device in Star Treck, then people would have gone to a cybercafe asked what there uncle Albert had done in 1963 and walked away disappointed (remember no google).

Instead the internet let people walk away intrigued by what the internet did have ( which at that point wasnt' that much ) but it had possibilities.


Naturally the other argument was that the internet had more possibilities than virtual reality but many of the internet's possibilities lay with the fact other people where using it. There are quite a number or augments to be had but I do think that the management of expectation has a some contributory negligence.

here is a to a new technology of 'synthetic data spaces' or something ( please feel to suggest something )

zeitgeist* spirit of the time.