Thesis Final Draft

Digital Natives & Virtual Worlds A Millennial Coming of Age Story

By: Chris Wade

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| News 2 Feature Story Thesis Final | Professor Jordan |

Digital Natives & Virtual Worlds:

A Millennial Coming of Age Story

By: Chris Wade December 9th, 2014

30 Pages (All pictures are for academic and aesthetic values, I own none of them.)


By: Chris Wade

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| News 2: Feature Story Thesis Final | Professor Jordan |

Table of Contents

I. Part One: Millennials Rising a. Section One (Face Opening)

i. A Spot on the Wall 1. Will Delventhal awaits big news. He awaits his invitation to the “real

world.” (Pages 1 - 7)

b. Section Two (Nut Graph) i. FROM ONE WORLD TO THE NEXT

1. Millennials are growing up. They are moving from the virtual adolescent world to the real one. (Pages 7 - 12)

II. Part Two: A More Virtual World a. Section Three (Technology History)

i. THE TECHNO EVOLUTION 1. This generation grew with technology; it has a digital identity.

(Pages 13- 15)

b. Section Four (VR History) i. VIRTUAL REALITY’S VIRTUAL EXISTENCE

1. VR has found footing in real world. (Pages 16 - 19)

c. Section Five (Experts) i. CONTENT CREATORS

1. Innovative youth could bring VR to life. (Pages 19 - 21)

d. Section SIX (Anti Hero) i. REAL THREATS OF VIRTUAL LIFE

1. Virtual dreams can be real nightmares. (Pages 21 - 24)

III. Part Three: One Reality One Future a. Section Seven (Local Scene)

i. FROM SPECTATING TO INTERACTING 1. Millennials have a different perception. (Pages 25 - 27)

b. Section Eight (Face Close) i. A GAME OF HIS OWN

1. Will finds the future. (Pages 27 - 28)


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Part I: Millennials Rising

Section 1: A Spot on the Wall

In Choate Rosemary Hall, one of the nation’s best private high schools, there is a special wall on which the portraits of alumni, who have done great things, are hung. From presidents to actors to entrepreneurs, the wall signifies impressive achievement. Willem “Will” Delventhal graduated from Choate in 2011 and has his eyes on an empty spot on that wall.

Will, now 22, loves playing games. In his drafty college apartment, sitting in a fuzzy blue folding chair, Will’s eyes are locked and his breath is steady. His motions are fluid as he grasps the Xbox controller delicately in his hands. He leans forward, elbows pressed to his knees, drawn in by the glow of the television screen. He plays his video game like an artist would paint upon a canvas. But on this autumn day, his attention is split.

Will is a busy guy, to say the least. A computer science and business major at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, Will is balancing six classes this semester. He is also an active student leader and has aspirations to be an entrepreneur. A fan of storytelling, Will likes to write his own narrative and play by his own rules.

Inspired by a summer internship in San Francisco, Will launched the Technical Entrepreneurs Club (Tech-Es) this year on campus. The group pools the different talents of RWU students to make digital games, apps and anything in between.

So far the club has been a huge success, hosting recruiters from Samsung and a speaker from the rising gaming company Lumosity, where Will interned and where he aspires to work after he graduates in May 2015. Will also has high hopes for his club, which he wants to turn into a real company. Presently, he is coding an app that will track campus shuttles for students.

“We are building it together,” Will said. “The goal is to do it like a business would. Find a problem, solve it aka the app, and then we want to sell it back to the school so we can make more apps and so on.”


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On his desk in his apartment sits his laptop and a second screen. For him, this is his control center. His Macbook Pro sits idle at the moment, after a long day of intense coding on Javascript. This is Will’s fifth Macbook Pro. Just like basketball players run through shoes, Will geeks through computers, even though they cost $2,400 a pop.

Currently, Will paces and frequently checks his iPhone. His palms are sweaty. As confident as he is, this day particularly is significant. He is expecting an important message. He decides he needs a distraction. When Will needs to relax, you can find him escaping to a more virtual world.

The game today is Minecraft and according to the New York Times, it is “one of the biggest, most enchanting games of the past decade.” In this “sandbox game” the player is given a world of blocks, which they can rearrange, and order in any way they wish. Minecraft offers the user the chance to build and design incredible things. For Will, who values creativity, the power to build his own world is an immersive dream for him. Today, however, he cannot help but check his phone and email every few minutes searching for a subject line that includes the word Lumosity.

Will is a millennial, one of 70 million young Americans born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s – the largest population cohort in American history. He is on the verge of transitioning from university life to, what he, and many in his generation, refer to as the “real world.” Tired of theoretical book learning, Will wants to move on and actually create something. As he plays Minecraft on this autumn afternoon, his mind is fraught with curiosity and suspense. Will is waiting to find out if he has landed his dream job at Lumosity, his next step in making his own real world.

Lumosity is a web-based game company with a twist. The reason for the company’s multimillion-dollar success is their idea of using games to help train and improve the brain. From memory to math, Lumosity offers digital experiences that help the human mind expand. Working there last summer helped Will focus on doing what he does best, making things. He says he is done with college.

“College is not real,” Will said. “College is subtracted from real world values and is fairly antiquated. Lumosity was a much more ‘real’ experience. In some ways, it (college) is preparing you for the real world, and could easily be argued as "simulating" the real world, or as being a virtual world.”

Living in an apartment on campus, the view from his top floor bedroom looks out to a crystal blue Mount Hope Bay. On this November afternoon, there is a stunning sunset. Will does not notice though, as his eyes flutter from the big television screen to his 4-inch smartphone.

Will grew up in the woods of Connecticut, and spent plenty of time playing in trees as a boy. Both of his parents are actors and wanted Will to grow up in a rural setting, away from the intensity of big cities and in a place where he’d have to learn to entertain


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himself. But, like many millennials – the first generation of digital natives - Will also explored the virtual world of computers and digital technology from a young age. Born during the evolution of digital technology, codes, screens and social media have become part of his identity.

Video games, the Internet, computer programming and his two smart phones --, an iPhone for casual use and an android for app testing -- are part of his daily life. To Will, like acting for his parents, using digital tools is the best way from him to be creative.

“I really love it when something has a good story. I try my hand in pretty much anything creative,” Will said. “I have a Google Doc with ideas not only for games and apps, but books too. I think it is healthy to be creative. I have even done pottery.”

Will loves to play in virtual worlds. But his dreams are firmly located in the real world. “I have no interest in being poor,” he said. Computer science and business offer a means for him to make his creative dreams tangible and profitable.

“I come from a family of actors, so their thing was pursue your dream,” Will said. “Do what you love was the motto. For me that is making some sort of software company where I can make games on a mobile platform. I want to be creative and tell stories and this seems to be the best medium for me.”

Will loves Minecraft. His fingers move fluidly, controlling his blocky retro looking on screen character. Out of pixelated blocks of virtual material Will is building a castle in a virtual world. He is almost in the rabbit hole. According to his friend Pat Ruddiman, who helped found the Technical Entrepreneurs Club, the rabbit hole is where people go when they are totally absorbed in what they are doing.

“It is where you achieve a level of consciousness that is detached from life,” Ruddiman said. “You are so immersed in what you are doing you won’t know that hours pass. You won’t eat or drink; you will barely move but it will be six hours later and you look up and think ‘Where did the time go?’”

Lumosity is not far from his mind, even as he plays the XBox game. Will checks his phone again and again, scanning for a message from California. Will believes Lumosity is the place that will help him become an entrepreneur.

“It is funny his name is Will because he has more willpower than most people I know,” said Shayna Moran, Will’s girlfriend who also helped create the Tech-E club. “When he zeroes in on something he does it. It is scary. When he got the Lumosity internship we just picked up and moved to California for three months. No fear, he just did it.”

Will has a straight posture and a voice as articulate and sharp as his attire. Charismatic and welcoming, when he enters the club meetings every Thursday night, he calls attention with little effort.


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“I can do presentations and interviews really well,” he said. “I think business is easy. I don’t think it takes anything more than being able to talk well.”

Above all, Will wants to be a trailblazer and do his own thing. Following in the footsteps of his brother Eli, a game designer already at Lumosity, Will is on his way to doing what he wants most. Unlike his brother, who finds comfort in working for an established company, Will sees Lumosity as a stepping stone to his ultimate goal: his own company.

Will and millions of millennials are poised on the brink of a divide -- between youth and adulthood, college and career, virtual reality

and the “real” world. Fueled by his dreams and ambition, Will is aware that, if all goes well, his life will change if he gets the job at Lumosity. It’s the break he needs to start putting his entrepreneurial aspirations into action.

“I want to be on that wall at Choate,” Will said, alongside John F. Kennedy, Glenn Close and Edward Albee. “I think it is cool to see how people from there did such cool things and I like the idea of students seeing me and thinking, ‘Wow he did something.’”

Section 2: From One World to the Next

Born in 1992, Will is part of a generation that developed alongside digital technology. Bursting into homes in the mid 1980s with the advent of the personal computer, this communicative evolution changed the way society and commerce operates. It also changed the way children grow up and develop. As an estimated 70 million millennials were born between 1980 and 2000, the first generation of “digital natives.”

Between 1980 and 2000, personal computers, cellphones, the Internet, advanced video games, virtual worlds, digital cable and wireless technologies exploded onto the scene. Fourteen years later, these tools and systems are a part of everyday life for nearly everyone in America. Young adults are driving the explosion of digital companies, particularly gaming and social media. Beyond that, Google and Amazon have been defined and innovated by the youth that both uses and manages it. New breakthroughs hold the promise of transforming the tools of the digital generation, which are pushing toward the future.


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Brooke Welles is a communication professor at Northeastern University and has studied how young people interact with and use virtual worlds and how those interactions have affected their development.

Technology is a key element of human identity, Welles says. It was tools that brought humans from scavengers on the savannahs of Africa to the advanced and expanding species that have touched the stars. When tools change in a major way, that impacts the way humans live and work with the world. In the digital evolution of the new millennium, that is exactly what happened -- people changed.

“Their whole life is immersed in high speed reality,” Welles said. “Our understanding of the world is framed by technology we have access to. It has become integrated into daily life.”

When digital technology came into play, it allowed computers and other machines to work faster and more efficiently. These advances allowed different technologies and ideas to leave the realm of theory and become real. Virtual worlds – represented through fantasy games like Minecraft as well as popular social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter -- are online communities in which people socialize, share and have experiences that most would not have in real life.

In Welles’ research she found that many millennials perceive the digital space and virtual worlds as a place to learn and have safe experiences, without the consequences of the “real world.”

“People have an identity online but it is only a part of the whole,” she said. “In most ways there is not a difference (between the online personality and the real one) but in some cases you can lose (social or moral) filters.”

In one case, Welles recalled a young man she spoke to who feared coming out to his parents. He resorted to practicing in virtual worlds. As he practiced and became comfortable with the process, he was soon able to use those experiences to tell his parents he was gay -- in the real world.

Millennials use the virtual world for a range of reasons, some constructive and others for simple enjoyment. Will may never design and build a castle in the real world. But in the virtual one, he spends hours constructing moats and turrets, bringing to life, if only briefly, the fantasies he had as a young boy playing the classic Nintendo game Zelda.


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Welles understands the importance of communication. It helps society grow. When the digital shift occurred, communication technology changed, which, in turn, changed the language of the technological world.

Facebook posts, tweeting, hashtags, gamer, immersion, Google. All these words are common today, though 15 years ago they did not exist. Millennials, as digital natives, speak this language fluently. Because they are native speakers, they have an advantage over older Americans in the workforce. But millennials still have a lot to learn.

“There is a difference between the people who grew up with the technology and those that didn’t,” said Steve Mayer, a teacher at an experimental technologically infused school in NYC, said in the documentary Digital Nation. “I was not born with the stuff. I don’t think like they do so I am the digital immigrant.”

Will’s friend Ruddiman understands what it means to live and speak digitally.

“My whole life is on a hard drive,” Ruddiman said. “If I want to show someone something I use a computer. Learning how to code is a way to communicate for me. Learning the logic behind it is learning another language.”

In the documentary Digital Nation, director Doug Rushkoff says that when print came along, much of the poetry in language was lost because it was no longer necessary. Now in the digital age, many of the tools that shaped the perceptions and lives of the older generations are no longer as useful. Millennials are unencumbered by the old ways.

“Speaking a language and understanding a language are two different things,” said Ruddiman. “Some immigrants speak better English than native speakers because they know the grammar better. But most of them could not write a sonnet or tell a great story because they don’t know the language beyond it being just a tool. Digital technology for us is more than a tool.”

When the language changed, it created space for opportunity. But the Great Recession of 2008 hit young Americans particularly hard. Many millennials came of age in shaky economic times, which helped point many in the direction of entrepreneurship.

According to Pew, two thirds of millennials are interested in entrepreneurship. Of this group, one quarter is self-employed. Since the first millennials graduated college in 2002-2003, startups have become a major buzzword in the economy and tech startups are among the most popular.

“They have the ideas and innovative qualities of successful entrepreneurs,” the Pew 2012 report concluded.

“Never has starting a business been so hip,” Lisa Curtis wrote in Forbes magazine in 2014. “Wary of our stressed-out, corporate-ladder climbing parents, over half of millennials would like to start a business.”


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Aaron James, a lawyer, operates the Hatch Entrepreneurial Center in Providence. Part of his job is to work with the local universities and foster entrepreneurial spirit. James is 36 – just old enough to have missed out on being a millennial.

“I am blown away by the entrepreneurial spirit,” he said. “Mark Zuckerberg inspired so many of you. Tech companies are popping up and it is pretty impressive. The idea of going off and getting a job is clearly dying. They know they have to make them now.”

James believes that with the sudden rush of technology and applications, opportunities are following rapidly and millennials, like nets, are catching them and using them.

“It is a different world,” he said. “They (millennials) can do everything on a cellphone that I can do on a computer.”

Zack Johnson, who is 26, is a lot like Will. An entrepreneur and a millennial he is a rising star in the tech world. With his company Syndio just passing a net income of $2 million, he sits in his office outside Chicago, looking at downtown like a lion looks at prey. His ambitions and goals were born in his junior year college at Northwestern where he studied business.

As a business owner, he sees the opportunity to impact the world. For him, the spirit of entrepreneurialism defines his generation.

“It is about empowering yourself to create the change you want,” he said. “It is empowering for our generation.”

Millennials have a huge presence online. According to Pew Research, 75 percent of them have online profiles. They get 59 percent of their news online. They must always be next to their technological outlets; 80 percent sleep next to their phones. According to Pew’s millennial report, “millennials’ relationship with technology has completely changed their relationships with most everything.”

In many ways, the lives of some millennials have become more virtual as technology has overlapped with actual reality. In his office space, the tablet Johnson uses to operate his business can also serve as a social outlet. Even dating is an online experience. Work, play and learning all occur there. Johnson also sees how technology has affected the workers in the office space.

“I think many millennials are living virtual lives along with their actual ones,” Johnson said. “They live through computers. Social media, digital dating, even work and play is all online and on computers and cell phones now. I work with older and younger employees and there is a divide. The older get stuff done well, but the younger are faster. But they are also much more distracted. I guess I am too.”

Living digitally and speaking different languages compared to older generations has created a digital and generational divide.


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The digital evolution, like any in history, has two sides. It has produced a new breed of thinkers wired into the mass communication technology of the day. It has provided identity and strengths. It has also helped create a generation that has grown up with some serious social and individual flaws.

A humor column published in Time magazine in 2013, “The Me Me Me Generation”, written by Joel Stein captures a deep level of resentment directed at the modern digital natives.

“I am about to do what old people have done throughout history: call those younger than me lazy, entitled selfish and shallow,” Stein wrote. “But I have studies! I have statistics! I have quotes from respected academics. Unlike my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents, I have proof.”

Narcissistic, lazy, entitled and fame-obsessed are words describing millennials. Many see that technology has weakened younger Americans’ ability to think and has made them, in the eyes of some, a dumb generation.

Others claim that millennials are spectators that watch life rather than live it. Sitting inside playing games rather than being outside living or building real physical things. Older generations do not understand why millennials live through a screen.

Mark Baverlin, author of the book “The Dumbest Generation,” said that texting, multitasking and the instant gratification of the Internet and all its distractions have lowered the reading and writing skills of millennials, who are losing the ability to think beyond the moment.

Multitasking is another problem to Baverlin who thinks as good as the millennials think they are at doing a lot at once, they are just not. To Mark, Stein and many other older perceptions, millennials are a struggling generation failing to grasp and help the real world.

Welles disagrees. According to her, they are engaged, progressive and socially resilient. Each generation passes through the same developmental stages, she says: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old-age. The difference is that groups evolve much slower. The larger the population, the slower the process. In terms of the millennial generation, according to Welles who has watched, studied and predicted a positive look at their future, “millennials are a coming of age story.”

“They are an artifact of their parenting. Many of them grew up more affluently and connected,” Welles said. “Yeah, there are going to be some negative results there, but good ones too. It would be as if we looked at two-year-olds and judged them for their poor behavior.”


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A negative perception of the rising generation by older generations is nothing new. In fact every generation looks down on the younger the same way seniors in high school look down on freshmen.

Neil Howe, the demographer and social scientist who coined the term “millennial” in 2001 sees the attitude toward millennials as history repeating itself. The difference this time is the level of societal transparency.

“The animosity is not new,” Howe said. “ It happens every generation. In some cases it is worse. This time it is more public. We all see what is going on because we are all more connected. This is just the first time it is happening this way.”

To the older generation x and baby boomers, their kids are not living in the real world that they grew up in. Millennials are living in virtual ones. To the older perception, millennials are missing out. What those older generations may not notice is that, to their kids that lifestyle may just be normal to them as playing outside and building birdhouses was to their parents.

Though the mediums and methods have changed the point and purpose remains the same. The future however may be on the side of the rising generation.

Millennials are on the frontier and are charging ahead. This is a new generation with plenty of same flaws and weaknesses, but good qualities as well. As Welles stated, they are just growing up. As they come into their own, their virtual lives are giving way to real lives and responsibilities, where what they say and do will matter.

“We do overprescribe this typical growing pains for more serious issues,” she said. “It is normal adolescence.”


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Part II: A More Virtual World

Section 3: The Techno Evolution

Teddy Roosevelt famously said that understanding history is important because those who do not are doomed to repeat it. Time is cyclical, and perspective is everything.

The printing press is widely recognized as one of the most important inventions in history. It was created in 1450 by a German printer named Johannes Gutenberg. After its introduction, mass media – the ability to spread ideas faster and farther, consistently and with greater volume had ever before – was born. That invention changed the world.

Over the next few hundred years, a technological and communicative evolution took place that shaped Western civilization. Religious reform flowered in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, spurred by the proliferation of bibles. One of the first major users of the press was Martin Luther, a German priest who broke with the church and started the Protestant Reformation that swept through Northern Europe.

Trade and literacy increased. Business expansion gave birth to a growing middle class. Writers and poets began to find an audience and the written word took off. Revolutions occurred and democracy replaced monarchies and feudalism. But these sweeping changes occurred over decades and centuries. The pace of technological change since the 1980s is unprecedented in human history. And it has shaped the millennial generation.

Since 1980, more technology for communication and processing has been invented than at any time before. Like the printing press before it, the world has changed in its wake. If history is repeating itself, a new evolution may have begun.

In 1982, Time Magazine named the personal computer the “Machine of the Year.” Computers had been around for decades but it was until the first personal computer


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became available and accessible in 1982 that it really began to impact the way society operates.

According to the White House Millennial Report, “Since personal computers were introduced to schools in the late 1970s, technology companies have innovated at startling speed, often rolling out a groundbreaking new platform or computer model every year. Because much of this period of innovation coincided with millennials’ childhoods, it has shaped the ways that millennials interact with technology and seems to have affected their expectations for creativity and innovation in their own work lives.”

The first cell phone came along in 1973. Invented by Motorola, it weighed over four pounds. Ten years later in 1983, the first commercial phone launched. Today, of course, mobile phones and smartphones are everywhere. According to the International Telecommunications Union, cellphones are nearing 100 percent global penetration.

Smart Phones launched in the 2000s and they now have more computing power than the first space ship that brought astronauts to the moon. Today 90 percent of American adults have some sort of mobile phone, with 58 percent of those phones being smart phones. Among American teens, 70 percent have smart phones. According to Pew, 29 percent of recorded adults in 2012 report that they could not live without their phones.

Young Americans prefer texting to making phone calls or sending email. Texting has limited the way millennials write, according to The Digital Divide. As of 2009, according to Pew, 75 percent of young people text more than 60 messages a day. This has connected the millennial generation as well as older generations like no other

The Internet has been around in a limited way since the 1950s. After years of experimentation and development, it was publicly launched in the mid 1990s. Now nearly all millennials use the Internet and some of the largest business in the world, including Google, Amazon, Facebook and Netflix would not exist without it. As of 2007 the Internet has taken over nearly 97 percent of the telecommunication information network that used to be dominated by telephones, radio and televisions.

The Internet has linked the world. It has also set the groundwork for new industries and opportunities to arise, and has sparked a new wave of entrepreneurialism.

According to the documentary, “Video Game the Movie,” the gaming industry began to revolutionize in the 1990s. With more advanced technology, stories could be told by immersing players in virtual worlds. Before the then, games were considered simple amusements. But in the 1990s, many began to see them as art. Video games and online gaming have also replaced, film and television as the dominant money making entertainment form. Minecraft, one of the world’s most successful online games, was sold for $2.5 billion, and in September 2014, a new game “Destiny” made $500 million worldwide within a week.

Virtual worlds and experiences like World of Warcraft, and Second Life have taken off as well. According to GameSpot, World of Warcraft alone has over 7.7 million users. To the


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people that play the games, virtual worlds and technology are not isolating people. They are bringing them together.

Through social media, a writer in New England can talk to and connect with a protester in Egypt – something that would have been unthinkable a decade or two ago. Starting really in the early 2000s, Friendster launched gaining 115 million users. That was followed shortly by Myspace, which was for a while the most used site in the world. The biggest platform came in 2003, Facebook now worth $104 billion. Since then social media has become a major element of the World Wide Web. More than 56 percent of Americans have profiles online and Facebook claims 1.3 billion active users.

The Arab Spring, a series of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, began in 2010. Social media acted as the staging ground for multinational protests and news coverage. The millennial generation found a digital voice and shaped events that toppled dictatorships. This is one of the most powerful examples of how social media and digital technology have allowed people the world over to communicate on a more intimate level.

Philip Rosendale, the creator of Second Life, a major virtual world game and experience that allows users to live a virtual second life online, believes digital technology has not alienated and weakened society, but has brought it closer together.

“I think when we live in a virtual world, we immediately become more dependent on each other,” Rosendale said. “I think you will live in the virtual world a significant portion of the time.”

Like the printing press before it, the digital technology and the explosion of tools that came with it have reshaped the globe. Business changed. Wiring and entertainment changed. People across the globe have been connected in new ways. Revolutions have sprung up.

Over the course of 30 years, the technology we all use daily has become smaller, faster and more efficient. As it grows more accessible, it continues to open new doors that could bring about ideas that were thought impossible.

The world has changed and as the millennials mature so, too, do the technologies they grew up with. If you ask Erik Hall, an entrepreneur in Providence, what the next major technological step is, his answer would be virtual reality.


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Section 4: Virtual Reality’s Virtual Existence:

Erik Hall is the leader of the new start up, Nexperience. Based in the Hatch Entrepreneurial center in Providence, Hall is attempting to ride the edge of the innovative curve and begin producing content for near future virtual reality platforms.

The only obstacle between him and success is the small fact that there presently is no commercial virtual reality platform. Nexperience is a good idea, and work is being done to develop it. But it’s still in the concept stage.

“I am passionate to where the potential of virtual reality lies,” Hall said. “With virtual reality, it is an entirely new medium. It is evolving very fast and very rapidly and what we create today won’t be what we are creating tomorrow.”

Virtual reality (VR) has had a hard time becoming real. It has struggled to be more than a theory or a gimmick. The idea has been around for a long time and it has been technologically evolving since the 1960s. But has not yet reached a matured state.

Things began changing two years ago when a device called the Oculus Rift made its first appearance at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), an annual computer and video game trade show and conference.

According to Matthew Schnipper who wrote an extensive history on VR for Verge Magazine, Oculus Rift represented a major step forward. “Palmer Luckey, a kid born during the waning days of VR’s late-20th-century golden era, put the pieces together using improved technology. He raised some money and soon developed the Oculus Rift. For the first time ever, one could casually wander through a comically realistic rendering of Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment,” wrote Schnipper. “It didn’t really matter what you did inside the goggles, really, just the act of immersion was awing.”

In the modern context, virtual reality is perceived as the entering of digital worlds created by people using technology. By using headsets, body suits and motion trackers, they can become immersed in a virtual setting that feels real. And they can interact with it. Using virtual reality, anyone can go anywhere in time and space.

The phrase “virtual reality” actually means: to seem like reality, almost be reality, while not actually being reality. Ideas and theories are virtual things, while the physical functioning product is the real thing.


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The idea of virtual life and VR goes back to the French philosopher Rene Descartes in the 1600s. When he philosophized about life not being real, but instead an illusion, he was writing about virtual reality. That idea has stuck through the centuries. And when technology and virtual worlds came closer together through scientific advances, VR began to take form.

In the 1960s, the first VR machine the Sensorama, presented an arcade as an experience that involved vibrating seats and a multi screen 3-D display. Invented by Mort Heilig, he envisioned it to be the new movie experience of the future. According to Schnipper though, this future failed to materialize in Helig’s lifetime.

The obstacle has always been technological. All attempts at VR have in the past been too big and too expensive to produce. Things like motion-capturing suits, power gloves and headsets were experimented with and produced on small scale, but nothing worked in an efficient way.

A few years ago, when Erik Hall was working for a hedge fund in California, he stumbled on a startup company that piqued his interest. With an entrepreneurial spirit, he saw the name for the first time: Oculus Rift.

The company produced a new headset that linked virtual worlds, social media, smart phones technology and millennials. After a few years of development, Oculus Rift was bought out by Facebook for $400 million in 2014.

Palmer Luckey, the original inventor of the Oculus Rift, started his journey not as an innovator but as someone looking for nonexistent tools.

“I didn’t actually start out to create a virtual reality headset, I started out to buy one,” Luckey said in the documentary “Video Games the Movie.” “I could not find one that worked so I decided to try and make my own. I found that it was something that was finally possible.”

“The progress of V.R. technology went more or less dark between 1998, when V.R. arcade games petered out, and 2012, when Oculus started to make Kickstarter rounds,” Virginia Heffernan wrote in 2014 for the New York Times. “Virtual reality was an abject failure right up to the moment it wasn’t.”

Erik Hall tried to invest and become involved in Oculus during its early developmental stages, but he was unable to participate. Oculus launched too fast and he could not catch up. That is when he decided to treat Oculus the way Rockefeller treated oil, and give it purpose.

“I think VR is the future of the personal computer,” Hall said. “We are going to find our niche.”


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The reason the Oculus and VR is co compelling to Hall and others is its immersive and possibly addictive properties. VR allows the user to be anywhere and do anything they could want in a safer and cheaper setting. From playing with dinosaurs, to riding motorcycles, VR can make it happen.

“There is an innate desire to be inebriated by losing ourselves in something we want to do,” Hall said. “It can make life better for people.”

Hall’s business is small. It is new and has barely hit the ground running, yet they are already working on big projects. Hall however does not need an exciting and stylish office.

The Oculus Rift is a wearable computer that looks like a pair of boxy diving goggles. Once on, a small but high definition screen immerses your vision into whatever virtual world you wish. With a press of a button the person wearing could be transported to space, and see the endless beauty of the cosmos. They can travel around, from planet to planet experience views they might not have ever been able to witness. They can see in detail the inner working of a space station. The limit is the imagination with these vitual worlds. The immersive power makes the user feel like they are actually there, but in reality they are sitting in an old office in Providence.

Recently, the company struck a deal with NASA to produce a VR training experience that will set the user on the International Space Station. This is the beginning of what Hall hopes will transform the VR world and finally make the technology mainstream. His dreams are simple.

“It is a great hope of ours that we make the world a better place,” he said.

As eager and excited as Hall is, there still needs to be a medium. VR has not yet fully formed. Oculus Rift has begun to make a real impact but the process is slow. Before it hits the shelves it needs content. No tool is useful without content to bring it to life. Hall and others are working to do that.

Millennials are coming of age and with an entrepreneurial spirit, the creating of a new tool in a new digital age can provide opportunity the same way the Internet, computers and cellphones did. VR could be a tool that includes all these technologies in one. That could unload enormous amounts of potential.

According to millennial Blair Erickson, his generation could be the one to pull VR from the virtual world and finally make it real. Like Will, Erickson writes and finds ways to


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tell stories. Currently he is using Oculus to tell his own stories, while simultaneously contributing to the story of Oculus’ development and VR’s history.

“We are doing a lot with Oculus Rift,” he said. “There has to be new ways to tell stories.”

Section 5: Content Creators

Blair Erickson is a film director, entrepreneur and VR pioneer. He recently released the first Oculus Rift “virtual reality movie.” He owns and operates what he calls a digital studio and plans to produce both VR film experiences, and new interactive virtual worlds.

“It is about storytelling and we look at it virtually,” he said.

It all began with his well-received release of “The Banshee Chapter.” The new film experience would compliment the dreams of the father of VR, Heilig, who wanted to invent the future of cinema. Almost 50 years later, Blair has begun to do just that.

According to Blair, these innovations and achievements all start with dreams that some people get while watching movies. Over Skype, and with a broad smile, Blair Erickson explains why working with entertainment can inspire dreams of the future.

Martin Cooper is an 86-year-old fan of old school science fiction, more specifically the show Star Trek. An engineer and inventor who worked for Motorola, Cooper used to watch the show in the 1960s and 1970s. In the show the lead character, James Kirk, had a hand held communicator. Cooper, fascinated with technology, saw that idea and a dream was born. Martin Cooper became the father of the cell phone.

As digital natives, millennials may see and experience an explosion of VR, like their parents saw an explosion of digital. Instead of going to Easter Island or the Great Barrier Reef or Venice, millennials might “go” to those places via virtual reality.


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“I think the millennials are going to see the rise of VR,” entrepreneurial motivator Aaron James said. “The Rift that they have is like dial up to me, but I think it will revolutionize the way we do things. People could go on trips via VR. It provides experiences for nothing that could cost thousands in the real world.”

According to Lisa Curtis at Forbes, the millennial generation has access to so many new ways of doing things that innovation and expansion is easy. What is difficult is coming up with the next billion-dollar idea and succeeding. But millennials seem to go on trying anyway.

“Three-quarters of the companies that receive venture capital (VC) funding never return that investment,” Curtis wrote referring to how many millennials start-ups fail. “And yet we persist! The naïveté and idealism of youth probably has something with it.”

According to Pew, nearly half of the millennials today feel that they are worse off than their parents in terms of wages, job security and their future. Economic downswings, changes in global climate, political tension and the rise of class aggression world over makes things seem bleak.

However, young Americans are also hopeful for the future. Blair Erickson feels this way.

“Can we build something new with these new tools? I think so,” he said. “Let’s figure out how to rebuild society.”

A place where millennials have an edge, according to James, is in that they are more versed in their digital language. This is prevalent on social media.

“Social media is not as real for me as it is for you (millennials),” he said. “You own it. Entrepreneurialism is commerce. Marketing is sales. Communications is stronger in social media. That gives millennials the new edge.”

Henry Ford revolutionized the car industry in the 20th century. He understood the assembly line was a tool. He saw what it could do, and he gave it content, mass-produced cars.

Mark Zuckerberg is a poster child of millennial innovation and success. He had a tool, the Internet, and realized it needed a better means to facilitate communication and personalization. Facebook is known world over and has changed the world.

Zack Johnson, like Will, started his journey in college. He is slowly climbing up the industrial ladder. For a guy who started in college he has shown exactly what willpower can bring you. But he also understands the risks. “Entrepreneurialism is totally a gamble,” he said.

Erik Hall is a risk taker. He has started something that may fail. VR is still in the nascent stage. However he is determined to see it through. He will help give it content. Like many of his generation, he is following his dream.


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Blair Erickson is making a digital studio and created the first VR movie. He is making spectator experiences. Like millennials, who some say have watched life more than lived it, he is now experimenting with producing more interactive experiences. Because of that, he is growing and helping the tool grow.

As Will plays Minecraft, he knows that even that game was created by one guy, Markus Perssons, who did it for fun. He later got bought out for over $2 billion by Microsoft.

William Warren is a professor at Brown University and operates the VENLab, or the virtual reality lab. Warren is someone who doubts the ascent of VR. He thinks VR is not yet mature and he sees its shortcomings, such as how users can get motion sick when they don suits and simulate jumping out of a plane, for instance. For him it is a means to explore and experiment.

“This is the third wave of VR,” Warren said. “It took the Oculus to bring it back. I think the technology is here but it needs more work. If they deliver something that does not work it could kill it again. There is a lot riding.”


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Section 6: The Real Threats of Virtual Life

In 2014, the New York Times published an article claiming that the Oculus Rift had solved one of the age-old problems with VR: motion sickness. Professor Warren, who has been experimenting and working with VR since 1998, knows that the issue of motion sickness is a major obstacle.

“Head Mounted Devices (what the Oculus Rift is) gives you all the visual with no actual movement,” Warren said. “That contrast between what you feel and what you see can make you very sick.”

The article, written by Virginia Heffernan, says that the immersive power of the device is able to cancel out the nauseating effects. Greg Dachner, a grad student at Brown studying VR, does not agree.

“I do not think VR is ready,” Dachner said. “It has a long way to go but that article that came out saying Oculus solved the motion sickness, that is just a lie.”

Virtual Reality in its third generation is developing quickly, but the creative and technological potential, according to Dachner may be running thin. The praise and excitement for the Oculus may be soon hitting a barrier.

“They are approaching a wall of what comes after the simple look of VR. Where do we go from there? Even Oculus has not idea what to do with it.”

History has shown that start ups and great ideas can easily run out of capital, passion and room to grow. But Trent Wirth, Dachner’s lab partner and fellow grad student thinks that though the path is not yet clear, there may still be a future with VR.

“Someone has to come along and figure out what to do with it,” Wirth said, “It takes a person who knows what it is, what it can be and how to market it and then it could explode. The entire VR field could be transformed by one innovative will.”


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Wirth sees the possibilities in the technology and the generation that is helping to define it.

“It has entirely unknown potential, but it is entirely interesting,” he said.

The VR technology is struggling. There are barriers but most technological breakthroughs in history suffered such obstacles. Millennials, who lead marginally virtual lives parallel to their actual ones, may find that real threats exist in their virtual spaces.

According to Welles, many millennials, in their youth, found sanctuary and safety in their virtual worlds and life. For a young man coming out to his parents, to Will building castles on a screen to Erik Hall creating a virtual space station to explore, digital spaces provided safe and private wells of experience. Those virtual spaces are beginning to be threatened by real problems though.

The future of fear is not all about bombs and guns and dark people in back alleys; weapons are also becoming digital. According to author and expert on cyber warfare and digital threats Tom Waite, we are under constant cyber attack from hackers and terrorists already.

“The average American has no idea how vulnerable we are,” Waite said. “They also have no idea how much is going on.”

According to Waite, the digital evolution and the new digital infrastructure, allows society to progress and lifts it up, but also makes it more vulnerable. There is an inverse relationship between technological advancement and vulnerability.

“This is the kind of warfare where the power is tied to the infrastructure,” he said. “We are so wired and connected it is a weakness.”

Digital warfare is a real thing. In 2007 the US crippled an Iranian nuclear power plant with a simple virus. In 2014 the underground group, ANONAMOUS hacked and stole information about the Ferguson Shooting, and distribute it amongst the populous. This caused riots. War is becoming virtual, young soldiers fly drones in a videogame like scenario rather than charge beaches. The virtual methods of the youth are becoming the actual fears of the future.

These threats are not only from outside the US, but also from within. According to Waite, though he does not see it in the near future, the digital and virtual nature of future life could allow for such books as George Orwelll’s “1984” to become real.


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“The disconnect we take for granted is a huge vulnerability not just from the outside but also from our own governments,” he said. “Edward Snowden proved that.”

In May of 2013, Snowden leaked classified government documents proving that the NSA had used the digital technologies newly developed to listen in on people in the U.S and abroad. After that leak, “The sales of 1984 went through the roof,” Waite said.

Ultimately, Tom applauds the developments made. But, he says, the strengths of the millennials, if not kept in check, could be their weaknesses. “Tech is a double edge

sword. It helps us but it can hurt us,” he said.

With the new great topic of debate and struggle most likely surrounding privacy and military technology, millennials will be on the forefront of making new laws and protecting themselves and the virtual world they have grown up with.

Miko Morill, a junior and major gamer at RWU, believes that be best course of the future will not be so much virtual as it is augmented. Augmented reality is the middle ground between VR and actual reality. It is the future where technology is layered over the real world, to help the user navigate and interact more efficiently. That also keeps the human in the technology. Instead of two worlds, virtual and real, there will be one.

“It is not all about the virtual world for us,” Miko said. “It is about using technology to live in multiple ways. To me

the future is more augmented.”


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Part III: Only One Reality

Section 7: From Spectating to Interacting

Miko Morrill loves to play games, just like Will. Not only does he play; he watches. Like football fans turning on the television on Monday nights, Miko will watch public spectator video games tournaments. The reason for his love of games is simple: he likes to be involved in his entertainment.

“Games are cool because it is not just sitting and taking it in,” he said as he plays the computer game “Skyrim,” a game that made $450 million. “When I play I get the story and visual stimulation but I am learning and interacting. I feel more involved in what I am doing and just watching does not feel as rewarding to me anymore. Where else can I casually slay a dragon on a Tuesday afternoon?”

Patrick Ruddiman, who cofounded Tech-Es with Will and works as a computer coder/employee of Thor Laboratories, sees apps and websites as his means of expression and opportunity. He also loves to use and create apps. If someone has a question about a certain app, Pat knows what and where it is.

“When I was young, I started learning (how to code) because playing with the stuff and seeing it was not enough,” he said. Currently, Ruddiman and Will are creating an app for Roger Williams University. Called HawkStop, after RWU’s school symbol, the app will help students use the shuttle system more efficiently. Scheduled for, December 5th, Will will Pitch the app to the school in hopes it will purchase their self-started creation.

Millennials have spent so much time in front of a computer screens, a common criticism is that they have watched their lives rather than truly lived them. Yet as they grow up, many millennials are showing interest in no longer being spectators but influencers. Coming of age, they are making their virtual lives “real” in the real world.

“There is one reality. Technology and non-technology will stitch together,” said Professor Welles said. Welles supports the concept of an augmented future.


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Technology and the people using it have certainly changed over the past couple of decades. The perception of reality has changed as well. As Morrill and Ruddiman know, their world is both digital and real. To these young inventors, they are not conflicting ideas, but symbiotic elements of their reality.

Katie Salen is the director of Quest to Learn, a company redesigning and imagining the way schools operate with

technology works to understand how to improve the learning of the young. She talks about the collapsing of the divide between virtual and actual reality in the documentary Digital Nation.

“People talk about this distinction between a virtual world and the real world and there is a concern that the young cannot separate the two,” she said. “I think that distinction is an adult idea. An idea that comes from a people where virtual did not exist. But kids have the ability to seamlessly move between the two.”

Section 8: Playing His Own Game

Minecraft is off for now, but his roommates are home and their favorite group game, the classic Nintendo “Super Smash Brothers” is on. As Will smiles devilishly, he takes the lead in this boisterous digital competition. As cartoon characters battle on screen, the show would keep even Miko Morrill excited.

Will keeps glancing at his phone, though. No emails or calls so far from San Francisco.

Graduation is six months away; Will still has a lot to do. The app he and Pat have been working on has yet to be finished and their delivery goal of December is approaching. The Technical Entrepreneurs club is growing, but Will knows that without content, it could fade away.


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A job offer from Lumosity would provide more than a salary. It would mean stability and an opportunity to learn the ins and outs of a computer technology company. Lumosity is the next step in his story, and he knows it.

“Lumosity is funny because they kind of let you make stuff happen. Like there were projects that I had access to that I could just take charge and make them notice it,” he said. “When it came to getting the real job, I had to prove myself. I told them I wanted to work there. I made the effort and I think it will pay off.”

Zack Johnson, running his own college started business, thinks Will is doing the right thing.

“It is about going for it,” Zack said. “Make it happen and it will. That is what this future will be about. Us as a generation making it happen.”

As Welles said, the virtual world Will is in and the real one he wants to enter to are one and the same thing.

On Friday October 10thth around 3pm, Will was alone when the phone finally vibrated. The screen lit up with an email alert. Will said he read it and smiled and just sat quiet for a while. Will immediately texted him mom and then his girlfriend, neither of them replied for at least 10 minutes. At the time, he was playing Minecraft again. He said he felt relief; he had done what he wanted. He could do what he wanted.

Come late June, Will will officially be a member of the Lumosity team. Serving as an Associate Games Engineer, Lumosity will be assisting Willem in his cross continental move.

Relaxed and when playing games, Will is typically in the zone again. He is ready to once again simply have fun with his friends. Adult worries and responsibilities can wait a little longer.

At Choate Rosemary Hall, there is a wall with pictures of alumni that have done great things. Alongside presidents and actors, moguls and writers, there is room, surely, for one more photograph. If all goes as planned, Willem “Will” Delventhal’s portrait might, too, grace that wall. And, years from now, there may be an ambitious twenty-something at Roger Williams University, sitting in a dorm room, playing a game created by a famous entrepreneur, dreaming of experiencing similar success.

“Follow your dreams,” Will said. “That is what I plan on doing when I get out of here.”


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Source List:

Interviews:

1. Erik Hall | President of Nexperience | In Person a. Date(S) Interviewed: Oct. 1 b. Email: [email protected] c. Owns company producing VR content.

2. PHD Brooke Welles| Professor at Northeastern University| In Person a. Date(S) Interviewed: Oct. 8 b. Email: [email protected] c. Studied impact of virtual worlds on child development.

3. Neil Howe | Official Demographer | Over Phone a. Date(S) Interviewed: Oct. 11 b. Email: [email protected] c. Coined the term Millennial.

4. Tom Waite | Author | Over Phone a. Date(S) Interviewed: Nov. 7 b. Phone: 617 867 9293 c. Author of Lethal Code, expert on cyber terrorism.

5. Blair Erickson | Director and Producer | Over Skype a. Date(S) Interviewed: Nov. 11 b. Email: [email protected] c. Director of first VR movie.

6. Zack Johnson | CEO Syndio Social | Over Phone a. Date(S) Interviewed: Sep. 23 and Nov. 4 b. Phone: 508 446 2141 c. Entrepreneur of tech start up.

7. PHD William Warren | Professor at Brown | In Person a. Date(S) Interviewed: Nov. 21 b. Phone: (401) 863-3980 c. Runs the biggest VR Lab in New England (since 1998).

8. Aaron James| Head of Hatch Entrepreneurial Center| In Person a. Date(S) Interviewed: October 15 b. Email: [email protected] c. Entrepreneur working with millennial students.

9. Miko Moril | Student Gamer | In Person


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a. Date(S) Interviewed: October 10 b. Phone: 1-925-482-4168 c. Student gaming expert.

10. Patrick Ruddimen | Student Programmer | In Person a. Date(S) Interviewed: Oct. 30 b. Phone: 908-872-0230 c. Student programmer, Tech-E, real world employee.

11. Greg Dachner | VR Research Grad Student | In Person a. Date(S) Interviewed: Nov. 21 b. Email:[email protected]

12. Trent Wirth | VR Research Grad Student | In Person a. Date(S) Interviewed: Nov. 21 b. Email: [email protected]

13. Will Delventhal | Face | In Person a. Date(S) Interviewed: Sep. 29 Oct. 10. Oct. 20th b. Phone: 203-859-0746

Documentaries:

14. Digital Nation: 15. Generation Like: 16. Video Game The Movie: 17. Terms and Conditions May Apply:

Books:

18. Digital Divide

Articles:

19. Virtually Numb 20. The Me Me Me Generation 21. Virtual Reality: History, Technology, Future

Online Articles: "15 ECONOMIC FACTS ABOUT MILLENNIALS." White House Council of Academic

Adviors (n.d.): n. pag. Oct. 2014. Web. 2014.

<http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/millennials_report.pdf>.


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Cowell, Alan, and Mark Scott. "Top British Spy Warns of Terrorists’ Use of Social

Media." The New York Times. The New York Times, 04 Nov. 2014. Web. 25 Nov.

2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/world/europe/GCHQ-director-tech-

companies-militants.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-

share&_r=0>.

Curtis, Lisa. "The Millennial Startup Revolution." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 18 Nov. 2013.

Web. 25 Nov. 2014. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/85broads/2013/11/18/the-millennial-

startup-revolution>

Fallows, James. "The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs Since the Wheel." The Atlantic. Atlantic

Media Company, 23 Oct. 2013. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.

<http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/innovations-list/309536/>.

Heffernan, Virginia. "Virtual Reality Fails Its Way to Success." The New York Times. The

New York Times, 15 Nov. 2014. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.

Hilbert, Mark, and Priscila Lopez. "The World’s Technological Capacity to Store,

Communicate, and Compute Information." Science.org 332.6052 (2011): 60-65. Web.

2014. <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6025/60>.

"The Millennial Generation Research Review." U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

N.p., 2014. Web. 24 Nov. 2014. <http://www.uschamberfoundation.org/millennial-

generation-research-review>.

Murphy, Kate. "We Want Privacy, but Can’t Stop Sharing." The New York Times. The

New York Times, 04 Oct. 2014. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/sunday-review/we-want-privacy-but-cant-stop-

sharing.html>.


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Rubin, Peter. "The Inside Story of Oculus Rift and How Virtual Reality Became Reality |

WIRED." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 18 May 0014. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

<http://www.wired.com/2014/05/oculus-rift-4/>.

Rushkoff, Doug. "Generation Like." PBS. PBS, 2014. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/generation-like/>.

Saccardo, Matthew. "The Millennial Is Dead: How an Irrepressible Stereotype Was

Finally Supplanted." Saloncom RSS. N.p., 25 Sept. 2014. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.

<http://www.salon.com/2014/09/25/the_millennial_is_dead_how_an_irrepressible_ste

reotype_was_finally_supplanted/>.

Schnipper, Matthew. "The Rise and Fall and Rise of Virtual Reality." The Verge. N.p., n.d.

Web. 24 Nov. 2014. <http://www.theverge.com/a/virtual-reality/intro>.

Searcey, Dionne. "Marketers Are Sizing Up the Millennials." The New York Times. The

New York Times, 21 Aug. 2014. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/22/business/marketers-are-sizing-up-the-

millennials-as-the-new-consumer-model.html>.

Zogby, John. "Millennials and Video Games: Developing Skills for the Future." Forbes.

Forbes Magazine, 22 June 2014. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.

<http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnzogby/2014/06/22/millennials-and-video-games-

developing-skills-for-the-future/>.

Documents

Thesis Final Draft