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The connection between VR and mind-altering substances has been made before. It’s no coincidence that one of the biggest proponents of hallucinogenic drugs in the '60s became an advocate for cybernetics three decades later.One-time Harvard psychologist and all-time LSD-evangelist Timothy Leary trumpeted the potential of emerging communications technologies in his last book Chaos & Cyber Culture."“The PC is the LSD of the '90s," he proselytized.I asked another VR researcher, Albert "Skip" Rizzo, who directs a Medical Virtual Reality program and helps treat PTSD patients at the University of Southern California, whether it might be possible to mimic hallucinogenic experiences with virtual reality technology.He was skeptical. "I don’t know if you can say it rises to the level of hallucinogenic experience," he said. Not yet, at least. "We can build virtual environments with optical illusions and mess with people’s perceptual systems and make it look like a hallucinogenic experience, though I don’t know if anyone has really done that."It's no coincidence that one of the biggest proponents of hallucinogenic drugs in the '60s became an advocate for cybernetics three decades later.
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