An Unheist Stealing Nothing, the Human Intelligence Badge and Why Milli Vanilli Might Have Worked Today

No, this isn’t a joke-or science fiction. Oculus founder and legendary blowhard Palmer Luckey has apparently been designing his own version of a VR headset that kills you if your health drops too low in a game. It’s meant to be part of his NerveGear project, which he describes as “the incredible device that perfectly recreates reality using a direct neural interface that is also capable of killing the user.”

Why would anyone develop this type of technology? As Luckey goes on to explain in his blog post, “only the threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game.” The technology is still half-complete, in his estimation and is still just “a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design.” Thank goodness he said that. I was getting a bit worried that this might be dangerous.