This Virtual-Reality Headset Will Change Everything

Earlier this year, Facebook bought a virtual reality company called Oculus for $2 billion.

Oculus came to BI's big conference, Ignition, this year. They bought the latest version of their VR headset.

I tried it and it was incredible.

It's very hard to describe what it's like to use Oculus.

You put the headset on (over your glasses, if, like me, you need t0), stick a pair of earbuds in your ears, and suddenly it feels as if you are in another place.

For example, you might find yourself standing against a rail at the top of a very tall building in a rainy city at night. Look over the rail below you, and cars are moving on the streets. You can walk around the platform, and the world changes relative to you just as it does in real life. If you are afraid of heights, your palms will start to sweat and you will become as uncomfortable as you would be in real life.

When I was wearing the Oculus headset, I kept thinking about a 1995 movie from producer James Cameron called "Strange Days." It features a technology people can use to "jack in" or "wire-trip." They put a bunch of wires on their heads, and suddenly it feels as if they are in someone else's body, someplace else.

Oculus almost feels as if you are "jacking in."

The experience is so incredible that I'm now certain that Oculus VR, or some other VR technology, is going to change the world in humongous ways.

Starting with the obvious stuff, and moving more abstract, Oculus will change:

Gaming. Plenty of immersive video games already exist in which you can move around entire cities and interact with hundreds of characters. The "Assassin's Creed" and "Grand Theft Auto" series are best known for this. Right now, you have to consume these worlds through a flat screen. The leap into virtual reality is a short one.

Commerce. There's already an Oculus program in which you can view your avatar in the mirror. Imagine dressing that avatar in clothes to see how they look before buying them. Or, instead of looking at pictures of a car's interior online, actually getting into it to see if you like the trim you've selected.

Education. You can already take classes at Harvard online. Sitting at a virtual desk instead of watching a video on a monitor will be nice. But education will change more radically than that. Imagine being able to travel with a Harvard professor inside the human body to see how cancer cells grow in the bloodstream.

Sports. The first way Oculus will change watching sports is in the creation of cameras that can take in 360-degree views and be placed courtside at NBA games. You'll be able to put on an Oculus headset, pay a fee, and watch LeBron James from what feels like just feet away. Rumor has it, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is already geeked about that possibility. Eventually, it's easy to imagine that Oculus cameras will become as wearable as GoPros. Then you'll be able to watch games from the referees' perspective — or LeBron's.

Narrative. The way we tell stories has never stopped evolving. First there were oral traditions. Then epic poems. Then novels. Then film. Then video games. Next, you'll put on Oculus headsets. Sometimes, the narratives will be first-person stories, and it will feel as if you are seeing the world through a character's eyes. Other times, you'll float through worlds omnipresent, knowing characters' thoughts. Whole industries will form around people who figure out how best to tell stories in the medium.

Sex. Oculus porn is going to be far more immersive than the static images people used to look at in magazines or even videos on the internet. Not everyone is going to be comfortable with how immersive.

Aging. In the real world, knees give out and you can't play tennis or basketball anymore. Imagine playing ball at 90. Also: How long can a human body live if all it needs to do is take input from VR? Could humans live for hundreds of years?

Sense of self. Sometime in the not-too-distant future, you will be able to put on a headset, a pair of gloves, and a body suit and feel as if you are a different person in a different place. Do that enough — substitute your five senses for virtual input enough times — and you may begin to shed aspects of your identity you once thought fixed: race, gender, age, nationality. On the bright side, people may become more empathetic and less tribal. On the negative side, people may abandon their flesh selves, leaving behind loved ones.

Wearing Your #LifeHacks

If you were among the many who tuned into last week's Apple Live event you were probably excited by the announcement of the Apple Watch. It's interesting to see how technology is evolving into an ever more personable, wearable platform and is transforming beyond the smartphone, tablet and PC.

The interesting part of the entire announcement was how applications would morph and shape as a result of wearing something that has a monitor 85% less the surface size of a modern smartphone. Since it's impossible to type on the device: voice activation or one touch will be a huge factor in how the device works. It's also unlikely many will use it for heavier lifts like online banking or gaming. At least not yet. Those areas will come in time, however for now it does open up a whole new threshold: applications built around quick, simple efficiencies and areas of productivity. We are now entering the formalized era of wearing personalized utility.

Life hacking is nothing new. It's been around as long as others have used storytelling to share how to enhance one's life or work in many areas. From improved self-awareness, personal efficiency, weight loss, health improvements, exercise, memorization, nutrition, multitasking, removing red wine from a white carpet, getting stains out of clothing, moving from a server to the cloud, learning to play soccer, riding a bike while wearing a skirt, etc.

The first personal life hacking digital app I used was back in 2006 with Nike+. I affixed a sensor to my shoe which kept track of the mileage I ran synchronized with my iPod. The program helped me improve my art of running so that I could be harder, better, faster, stronger. Yet the first wearable life hack I really used that I recollect wasn't digital at all. In fact it was when a German professor who taught with my late father told me to don a pair of cleats in 1979 to properly play the sport of soccer. Up until that time I wore flat canvas sneakers with no traction. Cleats or "boots" as many call them in the U.K. helped me become a better player at an early age when the footwear was still uncommon in the youth game stateside. Boots helped with mobility, kicking the ball with more power and prevented injuries by being more sturdy than a canvas sneaker. Suggestions like this have been around us forever, it's just now they will be more digital and data driven based on our own personal metrics and how we want to integrate those metrics with others in the world at large.

This scalable wearable tech landscape now opens up a whole new economy of innovation. Just like how mobile app stores have altered commerce, many businesses will come to fruition to alter the entire business landscape in this new emerging area activated from your wrist, your ankle, around your neck or wherever else wearable technology ultimately can be affixed.

While I see many health and wellness programs being adopted heavily using this technology, there are also areas that may diffuse from early adopters to the late majority and laggards as a result. Some of these include:

• Professional life hacks: Time management, Personal brand building, Brainstorming, Note taking, Programmatic updates, Synchronized scheduling
• Educational life hacks: Quick learning, Translation, Efficiency variables, Visual reminder learning
• Disruptive life hacks: Repetition course correction, New ways to learn, Financial advisories

Many of the above noted functions exist in the world of the mobile web but don't have as much personalization metrics as a device worn on the body which can take repetition, heart rate, atmospheric conditions and time tracking of an activity into consideration. Nor do many have the ability to take into account what a person's daily calendar or work/life scheduling looks like and how all these various apps will speak to one another down the line to increase efficiency and wellness in the individual using them. This is where players like Cortana* and Google Now could really shake up things even further.

Like the goldmine rush in 2007 where new players have taken hold and become part of our digital lives (Foursquare, Uber, AirBnB, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, just to name a few), there are many entrepreneurs and companies now from Seattle to San Francisco to Bogota to Tel Aviv to Moscow to London to Beijing to Lagos, Nigeria to Bangalore, India to New York City to Detroit to Vancouver sitting down and mapping out how to reach more people via this personal conduit. How exciting it will be to see what these next companies and their services look like and what utility they provide for the population at large.