Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a plethora of reasons for purchasing Oculus VR (and subsequently, Oculus Rift) for $2 billion back in 2014. The most obvious of those is his vision for the console as less of a gaming device and more of an evolutionary tool, with social networking as a fully immersive (read: VR) experience. But the one goal we didn't see coming? To show off his future baby to the world — using virtual reality.
Considering Zuckerberg, the statement is not that surprising, especially because he might have baby-on-the-brain: he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician, announced this past July that they are expecting a baby girl. To that end, Zuckerberg openly hinted at the prospect of sharing photos of his future child during an interview at the Vanity Fair Summit in San Francisco earlier this month.
The CEO said he was "really looking forward to being able to capture not just a photo but to really capture the experience... and have [family and friends] have the ability to actually be there."
Zuckerberg's admission led into a larger discussion about the shift from a text-based age to an image-based one, and how it affects the way we communicate and disseminate news — even stuff like the simple joys of posting photos of significant life events (like the birth of a baby) on the Internet.
"We're really entering into this golden age of video online, where that's becoming the primary way that people share and consume content online, but I don't think that that's the end of the line. There's always a more immersive and richer way in which you want to experience things," said Zuckerberg, who elaborated on the strains of 2D formats like video.
"Every 10 or 15 years, there is a new major platform that comes along," the CEO continued, "I do think virtual reality is going to be that."
You can watch a clip of Zuckerberg's interview in the video below.
Via: Re/code
