Top Ten Tech... Trends in VR

Top Ten Tech... Trends in VR is an eBook that appears in the expansion A Criminal Past for Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. It can be found in cell A-214 of Cell Block A.

Transcript
3. "Litigating for Loss of Reality"

''As technology advances, so does man's capacity to sue. In a series of high profile cases in the mid 2020's, courts began to hold developers responsible for "loss of reality". This disconcerting trend culminated in 2027 in State of Arizona v. Jeremiah Caldwell, in which a neural net developer was sentenced to 30 years for inflicting mental suffering on early adopters of his interface prototype.''

We here at Top Ten Tech have no intention of defending Jeremiah Caldwell (or his buggy code), but we do wonder why his plea of insanity was so easily dismissed?

Fact: The court agreed that testers who strapped into Caldwell's prototype suffered severe psychotic depression.

Fact: Caldwell strapped into his prototype more often and for longer durations than any of his accusers.

Essentially, the prosecution argued that Jeremiah Caldwell's technology caused a severe reality break in every one of its users…except Jeremiah Caldwell himself.

''After sentencing, the accused was heard screaming, "None of this is real!" For his sake, one certainly hopes he's right.''