ABSTRACT
The dawn of consumer VR in 2012 did not take place in a socio-technical vacuum, and this chapter details the effect of the delay of consumer VR in the context of the digital economy that has developed in the period waiting for the emergence of consumer VR. The delay period between the idealisation of VR in the 1980s and 1990s and the emergence of consumer VR in the 2010s is conceptualised as a technological lag, where the delay period for VR has seen society undergo considerable changes that have affected the implementation, design, use and ownership of consumer VR in contrast to the previous vision of VR. The technological lag has seen the rise of giant digital media companies who have identified VR as part of their platform economies dominated by the creation, processing, analysis and trading of personal data. VR as a medium offers new avenues for companies in the data business, and the difference between this appropriation of VR and the promise of VR as a liberating, revolutionary media could not be more stark.
