VR - The Rewards ... The Risks -- EXCLUSIVE Interview with Mike Rothenberg of River VR Accelerator

[My interview below first appeared yesterday in VideoInk .]  

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (VR), together “Immersive” technologies are increasingly meaningful actual realities for the business world and not just media and entertainment.  Much is written about the incredible promise and potential power of Immersive technologies for all of us (I too have written several times on that subject).  But, much less is written – at least in the industry press – about the known and, even more importantly, unknown risks associated with full sensory immersion. 

I became intrigued about this topic a few months back when I moderated a VR panel that featured Mike Rothenberg, a VR pioneer who runs the first VR accelerator, the “River Accelerator.”  (Here is a TechCrunch feature story of Mike from a couple years back -- am proud to say that my company's Manatt Venture Fund is an investor in Mike and his VC and Manatt Digital Media is heavily involved in the VR/AR Immersive space).  I recently interviewed Mike on this highly complex, fascinating topic.  Mike is one of VR’s strongest champions – and puts his money directly where his mouth is by financing VR startups through his venture capital firm Rothenberg Ventures.  Here is my interview.

Question (Csathy): Tell me at a high level what led you to not only be champion of VR’s amazing potential, but also a voice of caution with the cause?

Answer (Rothenberg):  I feel a social responsibility to address all aspects of VR given my role within the industry.  Like all great leaps in technology, there are really powerful things that could be positive or negative. VR is an entirely different type of visual medium because it bypasses your biological system to directly affect your memory.  It is not just visual; it is the difference in thinking that you are watching something and thinking you are there, which we call “presence”.

Csathy: Give me some non-obvious examples of Immersive’s potential to do great good.

Rothenberg: Definitely.  DeepStreamVR is a VR startup that helps cope with pain by refocusing attention. Some Washington hospitals have found that they can dramatically reduce the pain that child burn victims experience when changing bandages by immersing them in a VR world of snow.  In the snow world, the mind refocuses and the children report pain reductions comparable that of opiates.  It’s incredible.  Another example is FOVE, a company building a hardware system with eye-tracking software that translates a user’s eye movements to specific action.  An inspirational example of FOVE’s ability to change lives can be seen on its website, where a university student with muscular dystrophy in Japan plays a piano in a live performance using his eyes in a VR headset by looking at the piano keys with eye-tracking software.  Psious is another amazing startup changing lives. Its immersive technology helps people practice coping with fear, whatever they may be.  Fear of flying, fear of heights, etc.  If you can experience that fear in a controlled environment, you can learn to overcome it.  And think of the elderly and others who are immobile and confined to beds.  Now they can be transported anywhere in the world from their bedroom and be constrained only by our imaginations.

Ultimately the power of virtual reality is in its ability enable a permanently higher quality of life.

Csathy: How about on the other end of the spectrum.  What are some non-obvious examples of Immersive’s potential to cause great harm?

Rothenberg:  Watching a war movie makes you think you watched a war movie.  Inside a virtual reality war experience, you may feel like you are actually in a war.  VR could make a very different imprint on your memory and your brain that could lead to actual post-traumatic stress disorder.  If “Pirates of the Caribbean” is rated PG13 just due to the sight of blood, then how do we even begin to rate the potential impact of feeling what it’s like be there if someone cuts off a pirate’s leg right in front of us? We do not yet understand the implications there.  The ability to scar people is greater, and researchers will conduct studies to gauge how real those risks are.  I am not a proponent of blind censorship, but I’m afraid of what we don’t know.  That’s why we are not investing in potentially traumatizing VR.  We simply don’t know the real-life implications of experiencing terrifying content in VR.

Csathy:  In the panel I moderated, you used an example of how VR potentially could be used by terrorists like ISIS to create unimaginable impacts.  Are you aware of anyone yet – any group or company -- who has created VR content specifically designed to harm and cause pain?

Rothenberg:  Not yet, but they will come.

Csathy:  River seems to be mentioned in just about every VR investment conversation.  What is your investment strategy?

Rothenberg:  We invest in the intersection of where the world is going and where we want it to go We form proactive theses around next generation technology like VR, AR, and Artificial Intelligence, as well as invest actively in enterprise software and reactively in consumer.  Then we work with our network of hundreds of founders and startup CEOs to find and invest in the fastest-growing technology startups, most often as their first institutional investor, and help them get to the next stage with the right people for their company.

Csathy:  How would you describe the Immersive world as it is today, compared to where it will be?

Rothenberg:  I think VR in 2015 is like the Internet in 1994 or mobile in 2007.  It’s been in the preseason for decades but now it’s in the first inning.  There’s still so much exploration to be done!  So, although I don’t anticipate society’s immediate mass adoption of VR and AR technology, ultimately it is inevitable.