First, it’s amazing that this memory is from over ten years ago. In some ways, it feels much more recent, but in other ways, it feels like it’s from an entirely different world.

I’m watching a YouTube video about our current economic situation (Mostly the British situation, but it applies broadly). The presenter is talking about Dacher Keltner’s theories around awe and compassion, and it reminds me about an early project in VR: to film a boat journey through the Grand Canyon in VR. The long-term goal of this was to make an experience of awe more accessible.

At the time, I had drunk enough of the kool-aid to think this was a fine and noble thing to do. All of us had drunk enough of the kool-aid to think the simple problems1 had been solved, and that we could really dedicate our time to climbing Maslow’s pyramid. (Break-up Check-up, I’m looking at you right now.) Of course we were wrong. Really wrong. But at a deeper level, this was so wrong-headed. It shouldn’t be about mediated experiences of “awe”2. It should have really been about getting the people into environments where awe could be had.

Of course, Facebook wasn’t the place to do that kind of experience. But it was the place where enough people thought it was, and that’s kinda sad.

  1. You know, things like bullying and harassment, nudity, scams. That kind of stuff. ↩

  2. Are “mediated experiences of awe” even a thing? It feels like you can have mediated and no awe, or awe but no mediation. ↩

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