A long time ago, my family purchased a new refrigerator. There was, of course, a box, and I made that box into a spaceship, because that is what you are obliged to do with a refrigerator box. I spent many hours exploring and building imaginary worlds.

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to try out Samsung Gear VR, the Oculus Rift, and many different programs on Google Cardboard. One that stuck out was an interplanetary explorer. "Finally," I thought. "A large multi-national corporation is doing my imagining for me."

The many demonstrations I tried, were, for the most part, excellent. There was minimal to no lag, and a sense of opportunity  and untapped potential in each demonstration. It was an awe inspiring experience, probably a lot like early Native Americans felt when first encountering the early explorers.

This tech is good, scary good. Scary for me. I have in the past had problems with video games and Netflix. People joke about both of those, but it got to a point, where I think chemically in my brain I was unable to separate achievement in a show or game from achievement in real life. A big chunk of my life was wasted in a screen.

On the other hand, I got the feeling that VR could be a great tool for teaching abstract concepts. Concepts, like maths and sciences, that don't necessarily have a dopamine based reward associated with them for most. Video Games for teaching typing helped me out a lot when I was younger.

The VR made me feel like I was actually in the place, even in Google Cardboard, where you slowly forget the low resolution. For a couple of minutes I was in space, or in Star Wars Episode Seven, or in Tony Stark's lab. This tech seems like it could be useful helping people understand complex news stories and concepts, but as part of the same coin, it could help keep consumers in an artificial world created by corporations.