From computers to smartphones, every stage has brought us closer to a more interactive experience, but it is VR that promises total immersion — the chance not just to look at content but to be inside it. Yet despite the grand announcements and billions in investment, the technology has still not gone mainstream. Andrzej Horoch, a VR expert and co-owner of Connected Realities, talks about why.
As he sees it, the development of technology is above all a story about access to digital content. Computers gave us the keyboard, then came the mouse, and after that smartphones and tablets, which made the internet a constant part of our lives. We began to interact with the digital world through touch — literally through a screen. Virtual reality goes further: it takes away, as it were, the “glass” between us and the content and lets us interact with it through several senses at once — moving around in digital space, picking up objects, talking to other people as if they were right beside us. In that sense, VR is simply the next stage in the evolution of technology, and it finds its uses wherever it is genuinely effective.
Even so, the road to VR has been long and technically demanding. As recently as 15 years ago, such systems required cables, powerful processors and sensors installed around the room. Today they are lightweight headsets with computing power comparable to a smartphone’s. And that is already enough to step into the digital world. Still, the technology is not yet ready to replace our familiar devices altogether. As Mark Zuckerberg admits, predictions of a rapid shift to VR have not come true: for now, glasses with elements of augmented reality and artificial intelligence hold more promise than fully enclosed VR systems. The reasons are fairly pragmatic: cost, the limited number of players on the market and, above all, users’ habits. Smartphones are so deeply woven into our lives that we have, in effect, become dependent on them, and giving them up is not easy. That is why a new technology has to deliver obvious everyday benefits if people are to adopt it.
At the same time, it is precisely the big tech companies’ drive to scale up that is making VR more accessible. Today even medium-sized businesses can afford to adopt such solutions — from off-the-shelf applications to bespoke systems tailored to their needs. And this is where virtual reality is already proving its worth. The most obvious field is training. VR makes it possible to prepare employees for their work in a safe, controlled environment while keeping the quality of training consistent. This matters especially wherever procedures have to be followed to the letter. Most often these are hybrid models that combine technology with hands-on work with experts. In medicine, for example, students can train on virtual simulations, getting more practice without putting patients at risk. Similar solutions are already widely used in dentistry, veterinary medicine and other fields as well.
New possibilities bring new questions with them. Technology is changing not only the way we work but also our behaviour and our relationships. Our contact with the digital world is becoming more and more individualised: we choose when a message will do and when meeting in person matters. And at the same time, every new technology brings new risks. These fears are nothing new — people were once warned against an excessive passion for literature; today the warnings are about the digital world. Virtual reality simply adds another dimension to these debates, amplifying both the opportunities and the potential threats.
Ultimately, VR and artificial intelligence merely amplify the intentions of those who use them. They can help employees and improve safety and efficiency, but they can also become instruments of control. AI glasses effectively give technology “eyes”: it sees and analyses the space around it. And the question is not the technology itself but how it is used — to help, or to collect data and keep people under surveillance.
So the development of virtual reality is not only a story of innovation but also a story of choice. It can become a tool for development, learning and safety — or a mechanism of control. And the future of this technology depends not so much on what it can do as on how people decide to use it.
Dr. Myroslav Trofymuk
Born in Lviv. Designer, director, musician, researcher, founder of ZEMLA STUDIO. Master of classical philology and digital marketing, PhD in the history of Ukrainian literature. Member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine. Since 2022 he has authored the CENTRUM MUNDI audio show for Polish Radio for Ukraine, continuing the same research into the contemporary music scene in Ukraine and Poland.
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