a16z Podcast

a16z Podcast: VR, AR, and Beyond — The New Medium of Human Experience

Chris Milk, Jason Rosenthal, Darshan Shankar, and Kyle Russell

Posted January 23, 2017

The building blocks for VR and AR are finally here — but the content is just beginning. So everything you’ll actually experience and consume in these new mediums over the next few years is being built right now. Formats aren’t yet defined or locked down, and the field is bubbling up with experiments in forms, formats and genres, from narrative to games to live events. As we begin to have real time rendered characters and AI-driven environments that you can interact with, the storytelling structure will also need to completely change.

Are these mediums inherently social — or just the opposite? What will self expression look like? What experiences are being built? Because fundamentally, that is the “celluloid” we are now working with — human experience, says Within cofounder and filmmaker Chris Milk.

Bigscreen founder and CEO Darshan Shankar, Lytro CEO Jason Rosenthal, and Milk join a16z’s Kyle Russell in conversation about the challenges, potential, and emotional power of these new technologies — on this episode of the a16z Podcast, recorded at the inaugural a16z summit.