Going beyond

Tom Hohstadt is preparing his students for the future. But it’s not the traditional stuff normally associated with a professor and his class.
   This is the future of virtual reality.
   And it’s not just video games and computer-animated cartoons. Hohstadt is teaching his students at UTPB about virtual reality’s impact in American and world culture as an art form and a language.
   “All language is simply a matter of shared meaning and symbols, it’s the process of communication,” Hohstadt said. “Virtual reality is an unusual language. It is an intuitive language; it is a metaphoric language; it is a language of what you might call felt meaning.”
   The main focus of the course is to develop an understand and the skills of virtual reality as the world goes through what Hohstadt calls “a tremendous change.” A change that is the driving force for the world economy.
   “It’s not automobiles, it’s not investments and so forth, it’s entertainment,” Hohstadt said, “and the most powerful driving force in entertainment is virtual reality.”
   The class is in its inaugural semester with about 10 students participating. One of those students trying to get another understanding of virtual reality is 20-year-old Jared Inting.
   “The way (Hohstadt) lectures, is still very interesting to me,” Inting said. “I don’t think robots are going to replace humans or anything like that, but (virtual reality) is definitely moving to something closer to that.”
   In the movie “I, Robot,” director Alex Proyas shows the world in 2035 being depicted as a place where humans are assisted by robots and other specialty computer-operated machines. While Inting doesn’t believe the world is headed in that direction, his classmate, 20-year-old Raeina Quintana does.
   “We are the leading nation (with virtual reality). We are also the only dependent nation on virtual reality, and I think it starts (when kids are young),” she said. “I’m the kind of person that envisions robots doing stuff for us, teleporting and everything. I really do think in the next few years, we’re going to see a really big pop.”
   Students will also learn the affect virtual reality has on personal ethics and mental health. Hohstadt plans to teach the affect a world of virtual reality has on human thought and values.
   “We already have laws that govern reality, but people are more and more living in a virtual reality situation, and we don’t yet have guidelines — we don’t yet have responsible decisions made,” Hohstadt said. “Virtual reality can either be a creative participation for us or it can be a very domineering issue for us, and that’s where you get into ethics.”
   “It’s just a fantastic influence on our culture at this time,” he said.