Before this class began I knew technology would have a major impact on my career, and my life in the future in general, but after this class, and after going on the virtual reality field trip it sunk in how huge of an impact technology is really going to have, and how major the changes coming in the next couple years are. Virtual Reality is on the rise, it’s a compelling system where you can literally get lost in another world for hours on end. In an article for The Atlantic, Mark Zuckerberg said, “One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people” (The Good and Bad). In the article they talked about how it’s basically a race to see who can make the best VR equipment that will make its way into the homes of the general public. Currently Google, Samsung, Sony, Microsoft, and Facebook are some of the major players.
Along with the future of VR, other technology is everywhere. Technology is in the workplace, in the schools, and even in the presidential election. President-Elect Donald Trump ran a very abnormal campaign, in the sense that he had almost no traditional advertisements. “An unprecedented feature of Donald Trump’s successful campaign for president was his personal use of Twitter” (Trump’s use of Twitter). Current President, Barack Obama, has a twitter but it usually isn’t run by him, and it isn’t used to be the primary sharer of new political information. “Trump hasn’t held a press conference since July, instead opting for the more controlled setting of interviews and of course Twitter, over which he has total control” (Trump’s use of Twitter). These days control is very important to people, and technology lets them have as much of it as possible.
Along with keeping everyone up to date with everything Donald Trump, Twitter has recently started live streaming major football games, although this is fairly unrelated to the future of Advertising and PR, it is breaking the ground for other live streams in the future. “In the next decade, we will see a growing overlap between the physical and digital worlds” (Twitter is Transforming). I take this as meaning that if you want to be at a certain event, you won’t actually have to be there. This is already some what a reality, you can watch sports on TV, you can live stream events on FaceBook, or other networks, but this article takes it further, they believe that in the near future you will be able to use Virtual Reality to actually feel like you are attending these events. “Virtual reality is one element that social networks and streaming services could use to completely change how fans watch sports” (Twitter is Transforming). But it doesn’t stop at sports, you could experience anything from a concert, a speech, your class, or an important meeting.
This could even be used as an advertising tactic. Say you’re working for a hotel in Mexico, and they’ve hired you to try and recruit more customers, with VR you can create a online “reality” of the hotel and the beaches, and use that to try and lure in new customers. Anyone can look at a picture of a beach and wish they were there, but if you put on a pair of goggles and are transported to the beach, you’re going to have a harder time taking them off and going back to reality. “Digital advertising has become a key part of most marketing campaigns” (Social Media Advertising). This would be yet another new aspect of social media advertising.
Since it is so new, VR is constantly improving. Currently they’re working on making it a more physical experience, “Headsets today are doing an excellent job at catering to your visual senses, and a little bit of audio as well, [but] that’s just two of the senses. Once you begin catering to the rest of the senses, like what we feel body-wise, temperature-wise, and smell, the reality factor of virtual reality [becomes] stronger and the virtual piece begins to fade” (3 Things to Know). You can already quickly get lost in the virtual reality world, and adding on the other senses would make it so much easier.
Overall, I think that it is going to be very important to keep up with what is going on in the technological world. Everything is so constantly changing, that according to Social Media Advertising, four years becomes “a lifetime in the digital world.” A lot can happen in a lifetime and you’re going to want to stay on top of it so you don’t miss anything.
Christine Melvin 