Head/Space

 This is Blaise Pascal.

  

    He was a French math genius, philosopher, and inventor of what may have been the first bus line. He built a mechanical calculator at the age of nineteen -- in 1642 -- and tried to use logic to prove the existence of God. One of his most famous quotes is: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

This is Mark Zuckerberg.

    At age nineteen he built a website that urged college dudes to decide which of their female classmates were hotter. Now he controls a company that sits upon the personal data of 2+ billion people and is credibly accused of undermining democracy and human rights. Zuckerberg's latest Facebook project is a technology means to ensure that you need not, even when no one else is at home, be alone. 

    It's called Horizon Workrooms. The basic idea is: a Zoom meeting, but in virtual reality. 

 

 

    There's some impressive digital wizardry at work here. You can scan your own personal desk into the VR environment. You can have a virtual replica of your laptop in this mini-Matrix, which means you can work and/or surf the internet on a screen that exists only as pixels. You can draw on a virtual whiteboard. Have a look:

 

 But apparently you can't have legs.

        All of this requires the use of an Oculus Quest 2 headset, just the item for all the people who have ever thought "This morning meeting would be a lot more fun if I had a pound of hardware strapped to my face." Are there many such people out there? As Pascal might have said, "On ne sait jamais."