‘No Line on the Horizon': Virtual Reality in Digital Ecosystems and the Politics of Immersive Storytelling

‘No Line on the Horizon': Virtual Reality in Digital Ecosystems and the Politics of Immersive Storytelling

Christian Stiegler
Copyright: © 2020 |Pages: 16
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-4796-0.ch004
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Abstract

This chapter applies and extends the concept of social media logic to assess the politics of immersive storytelling on digital platforms. These politics are considered in the light of what has been identified as mass media logic, which argues that mass media in the 20th century gained power by developing a commanding discourse that guides the organization of the public sphere. The shift to social media logic in the 21st century, with its grounding principles of programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication, influenced a new discourse on the logics of digital ecosystems. Digital platforms such as Facebook are offering all-surrounding mediated environments to communicate in virtual reality (‘Horizon') as well as immersive narratives such as Mr. Robot VR. This chapter provides an overview of the changing dynamics within Facebook's VR strategy as well as an understanding of the politics of immersive storytelling and its underlying principles of programmability, user experience, popularity, and platform sociality, which define immersive technologies in the 21st century.
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Facebook’S ‘Horizon’ And The Logics Of Digital Ecosystems

A few years after Zuckerberg’s announcement at Oculus Connect, the future of immersive digital ecosystems and Social VR looks slightly different. As of October 25, 2019, ‘Facebook Spaces’ and ‘Oculus Rooms’ have been shut down to “make way for Facebook Horizon” (Facebook, 2019), the company’s next try at a Social VR platform in 2020. Despite high hopes, particularly ‘Spaces’ was not able to achieve enough traction and did not convince the masses to buy in yet. While the idea of a social network in VR is still part of our cultural landscape, the market itself remains too fragmented with multiple platforms emerging and disappearing at the same time. For instance, in recent months Google’s sky high ambitions for their own mass market VR platform ‘Daydream’ have been shifted towards Augmented Reality (AR) technology instead. Unlike VR, AR focuses on utility instead of entertainment, which seems to be a better fit for Google’s core competencies. As a result, ‘Daydream’ has almost disappeared from Google’s portfolio. Mixed Reality (MR), on the other hand, pushed by Microsoft (HoloLens), is mainly designed to be used by businesses to improve manufacturing processes even though start up Magic Leap want to position MR as an entertainment technology. Currently, VR continues to do well in the games community with Sony (PlayStation VR) and HTC (Vice) competing for the newest content.

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