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Can we use virtual reality to enrich ourselves culturally?

The answer is a resounding yes: virtual reality offers us the opportunity to immerse ourselves in virtual environments without leaving home, and we just have to choose options that contribute to our growth.

Let’s look at the three best options I’ve found.

Museums

If you love art, virtual reality offers the easiest way to come face-to-face, “live,” with great works of art.

From major museums that offer the possibility of immersing yourself in them through virtual reality to emerging artists showcasing their work on “indie” exhibition apps, you have hundreds of hours of pictorial and sculptural enjoyment at your disposal, regardless of your preferred model.

You just need to access the website of, for example, the Prado Museum through your browser and click on the virtual reality button (the goggles icon in the center-bottom part) to experience the beauty of art firsthand.

Additionally, in most cases, the resolution provided by museums is spectacular.

Oh, and it’s free.

Traveling

If you’re like me, you’ve spent countless hours using Google Maps. The possibility of virtually walking down almost any street in the world is irresistible for a curious person.

It’s not just about seeing great monuments, but also about picking a random place in Vietnam and watching people go about their daily lives. Many times I listen to podcasts while wandering the streets of a small town in any country that comes to mind.

Well, virtual reality makes this experience infinitely more immersive. Sometimes I even feel like I’ve actually visited these places.

There are several applications that allow us to have this experience, from Google’s official app to Wander if you have a Quest model.

Reading

The main problem we face today when reading is distractions.

If you read on a computer, tablet, or even a mobile phone, you’ll constantly be tempted to check email, WhatsApp, YouTube, the news… The pull of notifications is too strong, and every three minutes of reading you’ll interrupt it to stay updated with the latest from the internet.

And physical reading, on paper? More of the same, it doesn’t matter if you’re not using a screen, you’ll have your phone in your pocket or next to you on the couch. The result will be the same, after every page you finish, you’ll feel the urge to pick up your phone to make sure the world hasn’t ended in the last five minutes.

When you use virtual reality to read, this doesn’t happen.

For starters, you find yourself transported to a completely different environment than what you usually experience. It’s usually an idyllic room or landscape where you’re completely alone with pleasant and soothing background sounds.

You just need to open a reading app, or, as I do, Wikisource, and start reading.

You might ask, “Can’t you still access your phone?”

Of course, I can, but to do so, I have to take off the goggles, and that, although minor, represents an extra psychological step that’s hard to take, especially because putting on the goggles comfortably takes some time to adjust.

Additionally, since the virtual environment is so immersive and calming, my experience has been that I don’t feel the urge to stop reading.

I can immerse myself in reading and reach that pleasant state of concentration that one doesn’t want to leave.

Virtual reality is a tool that can lead to social isolation and self-forgetfulness, but it also holds extraordinary possibilities for experiencing realities beyond our daily reach.

Like all technology, it all depends on the decision each of us makes: to be masters of technology or its slaves.