When You Hurt Your Back in the Metaverse…
…you hurt your back in real life too.
Neo: I thought it wasn’t real.
Morpheus: Your mind makes it real.
Neo: If you’re killed in the matrix, you die here?
Morpheus: The body cannot live without the mind.
— The Matrix, 1999
This March, I got my first virtual reality headset, and in the past two months, I’ve gone from a VR skeptic to one of its most ardent supporters.
I’ll be the first to admit that in its current state, VR often feels like little more than a novelty. Watching a movie in a virtual movie theater or having a meeting in a virtual office might each provide a bit of a “wow” factor, but at the end of the day, they don’t have many practical benefits over the traditional internet.
However, the reason that I’ve become such a fan of VR isn’t its current state, but rather its potential. More specifically, I’ve been amazed by the ways that our actions within the virtual world can shape our lives in the real world.
To make that statement a little more concrete, let me give an example. One of the first games that I ever bought on my headset was Eleven: Table Tennis. It’s a virtual table tennis simulation that’s so real that you can even add spin…
