Except, of course, that it can’t. Virtual reality has been hovering on the cusp of success for decades, and has never been able to appeal to the masses. In an essay written for WIRED just before Facebook went Meta, writer and academic David Karpf described how the culture-shaking promise of virtual reality repeatedly failed to materialize, despite breakthroughs in hardware and software. “Technology is always on turn a corner, on to be more than just a gaming device, on to revolutionize fields such as architecture, defense and medicine. The future of work, entertainment, travel and society is always on the verge of a big virtual upgrade,” he wrote, arguing that the problem boils down to the simple fact that “wielding a virtual sword gets tiring pretty quickly.”