Things that go bump in the metaverse

Tech gets a little messy. Also, 7 other things worth knowing today.

Ever since Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company formerly known as Facebook would now be Meta, there’s been a lot more reporting on immersive technologies.

Among the most recent trends: A series of breathless stories (Wall Street Journal, Science Daily) about how many people supposedly get injured while using virtual reality (VR).

Insurance claims went up 31% in 2021. There are even medical case reports on people suffering neck fractures from turning their heads too fast during VR games.

But I think we’ve seen this movie before. Think back about 10 years, when the Nintendo Wii first came out—among the first commercially successful home video game consoles that required you to actually interact with the real world by swinging a controller or stepping on a platform to make game actions.

Headlines at the time buzzed with the horrifying news of people breaking an ankle or accidentally hucking their Wii controllers through their TVs, leading Nintendo to create a very low-tech fix to th…