Boredom has a future in the age of immersive entertainment

I am appalled by creators who promise to waste my time, but do it so poorly that I have to go back to meaningful tasks. I am particularly dismayed by the major miners of our time, such as Facebook and Marvel, and streaming channels. That’s why I’m looking forward to the future of augmented reality and virtual reality. Maybe life will be more fun than ever when entertainment becomes, as the tech industry calls it, “immersive,” like other forms of entertainment that aren’t immersive. Should be a good book, but my brief experience of virtual reality has taught me that there are levels of “immersive” and we’ll be blown away.

Entertainment history is a history that can immerse people in an era. It could be a broad non-psychedelic chronology of mass entertainment: reality, religion, Shakespeare, novels, cinema, the Internet, and now “augmented reality” and a certain romantic notion of real reality.

As you can see, some of the old methods of immersion are gone. But I would not exaggerate their power. The old ways of immersive reality usually don’t match the new ways.

When a new technology emerges, commentators, especially in India, talk about its social benefits as if they are everything. For example, when the internet and cell phones were coming to India, there was a lot of talk about how the “farmer” would now be able to “find the price for his crop”, although that is the only thing a farmer wants in his life. life. Those who speak on behalf of the poor believe that leisure is not a basic necessity. In fact, the Internet and phones became popular among people because of the entertainment they offered. The first reactions to an impending Apple product line are usually not social-messages as they are for the affluent. Still, reviews of the Vision Pro repeatedly mention how the device could transform education and even furniture assembly, perhaps temporarily saving the marriages of couples shopping at Ikea. . There is little mention of an area of ​​entertainment that will have a profound effect on product sales – immersive, hyperrealistic pornography.

What is the future of boredom in the age of immersive entertainment? People talk about boredom like it’s a disease they keep fighting. Yet, it is boredom that created our personalities, and it may continue to do so if we allow it to exist. I don’t mean to sanctify boredom. The biggest pain is boredom. But still, it is a living force at the core of our lives. It is there if we can look into the heart of our childhood. The central emotion of my childhood is at least boredom, which was only marginally better than trauma. I had so much time and not much to do. When I had to do something, it was even more boring than doing nothing, like studying for an exam. To save myself from boredom, I wrote a lot, which was boring and even exhausting, but it was a different kind of boredom than laziness.

The scope for boredom has reduced with each generation. It is very difficult for today’s kids to get bored with the traditional methods. Their parents make sure they have something to do. In the summer holidays, the children are made to do extracurricular activities, like the inmates of Tihar Jail, under the supervision of a benevolent warden. They have many solutions to boredom that are entertaining. But it has raised their bar for excitement; As a result, they get bored even while immersed in the entertainment. The same is true for adults. There are many ways to waste time, but nothing really lasts, and boredom finds a way to infect you.

Today everyone is in a paradoxical trance of distraction. People go out to do some work, but then they check their mail, their social media feeds, there might be some reel, then there’s another mail. We keep scrolling. If you look at their phone immersed world, you might think they are that way because they are entertained by “content”. I do not think so. I think distraction is a form of boredom. Boredom – From being aware of the present, which is far scarier than the monks claim, to doing nothing, we are bored with entertainment. Augmented reality is going to create new ways to forget reality, but also new ways. getting bored.

Technology-based entertainment is strangely democratic. Even if a product is made for the rich, it soon reaches almost everyone in some form or the other. It’s as if some American billionaires have unwittingly made a pact to keep the masses entertained so they don’t rebel. The same will happen with augmented reality. As Meta’s virtual-reality headset, and Apple’s Vision Pro become mainstream, they will inspire cheap imitations, and soon even India’s poor will be connected to a surprisingly parallel world, perhaps in a network of augmented-reality booths. Some kind soul would say that now the “farmer” can consult “a virtual doctor”.

Despite its lure, augmented reality has a surprising quality. It’s tiring. After about an hour, one wants to return to the dullness of the primordial illusion of human biology, which we call “reality.”

Manu Joseph is a journalist, novelist and producer of the Netflix series ‘Decoupled’.

Updated: June 11, 2023, 11:25 PM IST