Mark Zuckerberg's grand vision is that someday, perhaps 5 to 10 years from now, Facebook will bring you as close as humanly possible to the people and things you love when human contact and real-life experiences aren't viable options.
As Zuckerberg imagines it, the mode of transport will be the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality head-mounted display that places you in a fictional dimension that feels almost real.
In Zuck's mind, Rift could allow for a metaverse where virtual space converges with actual time so that fact and fiction become indistinguishable. In this envisioned universe, you'll find yourself watching a Lakers game live from courtside seats, trying on clothes at your favorite store, visiting your primary care physician, or gazing into the eyes of a loved one, when in actuality you're sitting at home alone, wearing an odd and giant, goggle-like contraption on your head.
The virtual reality daydream is so tangible to the Facebook chief that he's committed his company to spending as much as $2.3 billion on Oculus VR, a less than 2-year-old shop run by twentysomethings who specialize in virtual reality technology. Oculus makes the Rift, a headset that does exist, just in a half-baked stage, which means it's not anywhere near ready for consumer release. Hence, Facebook and Zuckerberg can't possibly know the Oculus Rift's true potential or how consumers will react to it.
The king of social networks is far from a seer when anticipating what comes next in consumer technologies. Mobile, the most obvious of trends, punched Facebook in the gut before the company was forced to adapt and make its network work just as well on smartphones as it does on desktops. So Zuckerberg is determined to be ahead of the curve going forward, and to do that he's backing a chimera of a promise that has evaded experts, scientists, and visionaries since the technology became the talk of educational circles more than two decades ago. He's throwing around fantasies that strike some as mere hallucinations.