You know Jon, no, but I think that [Google] Daydream’s on the right track. VR is still at a stage where bleeding edge early adopters might find it exciting and interesting but it’s not particularly practical or sustainable or something that can be like a core part of a normal person’s lifestyle. It ain’t there yet. Google is starting to move it closer with Daydream by virtue of usability and simplicity and integration.

That goes back to the Google roots of the company. Certainly Google wasn’t the first search engine by a mile but what they did is they took the idea of search engine as sort of the powerful central point of a giant platform of crap. They removed the crap and so the search engine is the important part.

What they’re doing with Daydream is moving down the path of having the technology be more usable, more accessible, and more able to be integrated into someone’s daily life and environment instead of being some gigantic thing strapped to their head. Which is how the most popular VR technologies have been manifesting so far.

I’m heartened and optimistic about Daydream as the Google foray into VR but for me VR technology ain’t there yet. I’m happy to sit on the sidelines and let other people burn a lot of money and energy dallying with the latest and greatest stuff that thirty years ago would have been in a Sharper Image store. Then when it gets to be something really practical and interesting, I’ll get into it more in my own life. Daydream is a path down VR as integrated part of a digital life and that’s great. It shows that Google’s thinking about the problems in the right way as they generally do.