TY - JOUR AU - Carter, Marcus AU - Egliston, Ben PY - 2021/09/15 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - A CRITICAL FUTURE OF VIRTUAL REALITY: ALL WORK AND NO PLAY JF - AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research JA - SPIR VL - 2021 IS - SE - Papers C DO - 10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12152 UR - https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/12152 SP - AB - Head-Mounted Virtual Reality (VR) is generally discussed as a gaming technology, but in this paper we argue for the greater need to take VR seriously as a general computing platform and future site for, and of, work. For Facebook (who hold a dominant 39% share of the VR market) VR is not simply a gaming device but as a new frontier for social media, framed by Zuckerberg as a “new kind of social computing platform”. In this paper we report on our research that is examining the implications of VR as (1) a technology being introduced into workplaces; as (2) a possible site for existing forms of labour, in technologies like Infinite Office; and as (3) a platform for transformed and new kinds of labour, such as remote work via telepresence. We identify concerning issues of algorithmic discrimination, exascberated by a prevailing 'fantasy of perfect data' with VR, with serious consequences in the context of productivity tracking and analytics, and the further expansion of the gig economy into new domains. ER -