Letters from the Future: Virtualizing Soft Skills Training

(September 2020)

A few months ago, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) teamed up with Talespin (a virtual reality (VR) development team with offices in Europe and the US) to produce the largest VR soft skills study ever.

To us in the VR/AR industry, the outcome wasn't a huge shock.

The results confirmed academic findings that have been around for decades; the fact that experiential media has a profound effect on how we engage with, and remember, lessons learned therein. In the past, media theorists, like Marshall McLuhan, showed that if we human beings interact with the media (no matter the content), we're likely to (a.) remember and (b.) appreciate the message. Practically speaking, educators have enshrined this principle by encouraging participation in their classes. Similarly, marketing agencies deploy this technique when they prioritize clicks, stories, and video content. That which we interact with, seizes our attention. This is what virtual reality is all about. By its very nature, the medium itself facilitates a deeper psychological connection with the content.

Although not overly surprising for some of us, PwC's study was obviously a consequential and timely project. Here are some of their findings:

Clearly, the study paints a rosy picture of VR learning.

That's not to say there aren't items on the right-hand side of the pros & cons list. Relatively high upfront capital expenditure, technical support, fleet management, and equipment upkeep are all necessary. Then again, these issues pale in comparison to the pains we in the IT industry go through to support legacy systems. There are also emergent questions in VR that we're still busy examining. Issues of ethics, health, identity, and embodiment are all still under investigation. All this, in exchange for a scalable, remote training tool.

Let's be conservative and say that in reality, the real returns are half of what PwC and Talespin claim. That would still result in halving training time, nearly double the emotional connection to training material, and a doubling of focus/attention during training. That's a "2X improvement" if you like how Elon Musk and Peter Thiel conceptualize it.

The thing is, aside from one local mega-fintech that just recently outsourced a lot of jobs/funds, I'm not convinced that locally, here in South Africa, there is much buy-in. Do we think that our own environment is somehow exempt from emerging technologies? Surely we're not that naive. No, I think it's simply a matter of awareness. This is what makes PwC's study so insightful. As a nation in dire need of cost-effective, scalable tools for skills development, South Africans could derive social and economic benefits from these simulated training techniques.

But what about the cost? This all sounds very expensive.

For a moment, let's put aside the fact that new VR equipment is cheaper and more powerful than ever before. Technologically savvy businesses (and nations) have outspent South Africans with respect to nascent technologies in the past. That's okay. The US has thrown funds and expertise at virtual reality simulations for decades. VR pioneer, Jaron Lanier, made a name for himself by coining the term "virtual reality" way back in the 70s. Similarly, there are serious concerns that well-funded Chinese and US artificial intelligence firms may automate large swathes of the global economy in the next few decades. (Although I'll never forget hearing MIT AI researcher, Lex Fridman, that he could "see the future" in virtual reality)

The question now is, how far ahead are we going to let them get?

Despite a violent wake-up call to digitize more of our business functions throughout 2020, I get the sense that collectively, South Africans are desperate to resuscitate 2019. This is a trap, my friends. Let's not kid ourselves. Do we really require more catastrophic events to slam our economy before we're dragged, kicking and screaming, into the present?

I don't think so. The president's fourth industrial revolution (4IR) commission headed by AI researcher and principal at the University of Johannesburg, Prof Tshilidzi Marwala, leads me to believe that at the highest level, our politicians are committed (however begrudgingly) to hauling our economy into the 21st century. Similarly, our local VR/AR communities are taking the initiative. In September, the weAReVRafrica.com community hosted a virtual reality panel debate on ethics in eXtended Reality (VR & AR) with industry-leading cybersecurity expert Kavya Pearlman, world-renowned podcaster Kent Bye, alongside South African technologist, Malcolm Che, of Eden and local hardware guru, Daliso Ngoma.

Metaverse Meetup Africa, a local crew of South African VR developers and artists, have conspired to architect a diverse zef-inspired virtual ecosystem rivalling that of international experts from France, Italy, Japan and the US.

From my own discussions with the team at Talespin, VR soft skills simulation is an opportunity that's gone begging for many in Africa thus far. It seems like a no-brainer to me... But then again, much of my own work in 2020 has been in an attempt to quantify the elusive concept known as "immersion". Our Johannesburg-based team (New Reality) built LvlUp, a freely available virtual reality simulation, to test how our memory, logical problem-solving ability and focussed attention fares in VR against more traditional 2D methods.

All this might all sound a little too sci-fi for some. To that, I agree.

At this stage, I've all but given up talking about "the future" as such. In this complex dynamic postmodernist age of information (and disinformation), one of the most important questions remaining is:

how nostalgic can we really afford to be?

Change is the only constant, and 2020 has viscerally demonstrated this point. The sooner we can take the present seriously, the sooner we can pull our society, our politics, and our economy together. Living in the present, rather than the past, is non-negotiable at this stage. My point is simple. If we can muster the ability to trial or build more virtual training programmes, we may be able to develop skills in a manner that simultaneously empowers us in an emerging technological field, while doing so in a way that makes financial sense.

What do you think?

About the author:

Dale P. Deacon is a software developer, researcher, and technological strategist working at the intersection between humanity and technology. In the past, he co-curated the University of Johannesburg’s VR for Business programme, has published articles on the future of work, and lectured publicly on technological trends, breakthroughs and strategy. In 2020, he was featured by ITWeb and Geekulcha as one of South Africa’s Top Young Geeks. Through his research and development efforts, he has contributed towards digital strategy and intellectual property (IP) development for a client-base spanning five continents. Deacon is an advocate of cross-disciplinary collaboration and contributes time towards proof-of-concept development, strategic consulting, commissioned research and education. 

You can get hold of him at his site www.deac.online, via www.teamepic.org, at [email protected], or via linkedin.