toward a white wall lined with
packaged phones and acces-
sories. Before we can react, a
flash, a whirring noise, and
then time cuts forward. The
woman is now stuffing elec-
tronics into the bag, panicked.
“Hurry the fuck up!” the rob-
ber’s accomplice shouts. “Let’s
go!” And then black.
As I remove my Oculus
Go headset, all is bright and
peaceful in an empty classroom
inside an unassuming office
building in Manhattan’s Flat-
iron District. Jeremy Bailenson,
a Stanford professor and found-
ing director of the university’s
Virtual Human Interaction
Lab, stands beside me. He be-
gins explaining what I have just
witnessed: a VR training mod-
ule for Verizon store employees
to learn how to deal with armed
robberies. “If you work at a
Verizon store, there’s so much
expensive material that’s right
near the door,” he says. “They
have dozens of robberies at
gunpoint each year. They want
to train their employees to be
READY, AIM, VISUALIZE: A Strivr
employee shows how to capture
accurate body movements
using biomechanical input.
SHOULDN’ T
THE
WORKPL ACE
BE A BET TER
PL ACE?
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