Dylan Donkin is one of my dearest friends from University where we both pursued degrees in Cultural Anthropology. 12 years ago, he was excited about the potential of self-driving vehicles and how Virtual Reality (VR) would make it possible for people to live and work more comfortably outside of city centers, bringing us closer to nature.

Dylan is one of those” cool nerds” with a double masters from USC and London School of Economics who then worked at Marvel, designed product for GoPro and is now helping to shape our emerging technically enhanced reality as a UX Designer at Google.

I invited Dylan to share with us because I believe his unique blend of optimism, realism and technical savvy will help ground me and hopefully us in the groundless space of VR and augmented possibilities. It’s time we have a little talk about what we thought today would be like, how it really is and where he hopes we go from here. We’ll talk about the light and dark sides of the psyche-reshaping potential of gaming and remote work, the healing and empathy boosting powers of VR, and the visceral risks of the techy-future we’re all apart of whether we like it, get it or not. We’ll explore the edges while having fun and keeping close to what matters most.

A few specific questions we explore…
• What animal would Google be?
• What are you a stand for?
• What is it like to spend hours on end in a VR environment?
• How do the effects of VR compare to an experience on mushrooms or other psychedelics?
• What world do we want to live in and pass onto our grandchildren? How will we be a part of creating it?
• If you could blink your eyes and there would be one change in the world, when you’d open them what would you see?
• What are the dangers of going too far in one direction without bringing in the wisdom of this body?

Quotes
“The hipsters will move to Iowa.”
“With more virtual living we will hunger for greater natural connection.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-donkin-579707b/
https://music.amazon.com/albums/B00AH62BEA?