Google Cardboard came with my mom’s New York Times several weeks ago. I happened to be visiting this weekend, so I helped her set it up. Soon she was excitedly looking around virtual worlds.
Of course this is perfectly emblematic. VR is now at the point where your mom might be using it. It’s interesting to trace how we got to this point.
In early 2012 a team at USC led by Mark Bolas created the first versions of what we now know as Google Cardboard. They gave it away for free as a set of do-it-yourself instructions. Total cost of materials: a few bucks.
The following year, Alex Kauffmann and others at Google who were inspired by the work of Mark’s team wanted more people to know about this cool device, so they adapted it, rebranding it as Google Cardboard. I suspect they were motivated to work on something fun and goofy as a kind of counterweight to the hype that at the time was surrounding Google Glass.
Now my mom is experiencing virtual reality. Maybe your mom is too, using hardware so cheap that the New York Times can just give it away. This one give-away might very well be having a larger initial impact on wide-spread adoption of VR than everything else going on in the space put together.
One odd thing is that few people seem to know this history. I’ve been told that a number of executives at Google itself even believe that the technology for Cardboard originated entirely within Google itself!
Hopefully people will eventually read an article about it in the New York Times. Maybe with a nice VR supplement.