Virtual reality is quickly becoming the new technological frontier. Tech companies everywhere seem to be racing to get their foot in the VR door. However, virtual reality has a set of challenges and hurdles that it must overcome in order to work well. It should be noted that VR is heavily dependent on being very fast, very accurate and very good-looking. If it isn’t, the viewer will feel motion sick or disconnected from the world that VR is trying to create.

Now that we can actually build VR headsets that begin to meet these requirements, we are seeing a rising interest in VR. As it rises, so does the interest in creating new media to be experienced in using virtual reality. Journalism is a medium built on relevance. Journalists should always be finding new ways to tell stories and deliver content. It is a goldmine for storytelling. What better ways to tell a story to someone than to put them right in the center of it?

Virtual reality is a powerful tool for journalists. The consumer isn’t just reading or watching something play out; they’re experiencing it. The immersive nature of VR allows for people to connect with the subject matter on a much deeper level than just reading about it. The experience is emotional, speaking more to our instinct than our intellect. The possibilities for storytelling here are legion, and any storyteller wanting to do something more interesting than their peers should surely be considering the sheer power of VR.

The question of virtual reality, though, is not how powerful it is. That is immediately apparent. The question of VR is one of viability and availability. Telling stories must be easy to do, and access to those stories must be readily available. This is the biggest challenge that VR faces. If the tools to tell a story with VR aren’t easy to pick up and learn, VR will fail. If VR technology isn’t both top-of-the-line and affordable, VR will fail.

Accessibility was one concern for Thomas Hallaq, assistant professor of journalism and mass communications, who said that current VR technology, is pretty exclusive right now. Despite that, he said he doesn’t think the exclusivity of this technology will be a problem in the long run.

“I think it’s very promising,” Hallaq said. “We’re seeing more technology become accessible, and more people having access to that technology. Just look at smartphones.” Like radio, TV and the Internet before it, virtual reality will change the way we tell stories.

I ran into my favourite technophobe (抗拒技术者) the other day. “I see,” he laughed, “that your tech industry is in meltdown!” The annoying thing is that he was partly right. What has happened is that two major security weaknesses ― one of them has been named “Meltdown”, the other “Spectre”― have been discovered in the Central Processing Unit (CPU) chips that power most of the computers in the world.

A CPU is a device for performing billions of operations determined by whatever program is running: it fetches some data from memory, performs some operations on that data and then sends it back to memory; then fetches the next bit of data; and so on. Two decades ago someone had an idea for speeding up CPUs. Instead of waiting until the program told them which data to fetch next, why not try to predict what’s needed and pre-fetch it? That way, the processor would become faster and more efficient. This meant that — in a nice comparison made by Zeynep Tufekci, an academic who writes beautifully about this stuff   the CPU became like a super-attentive butler (管家), “pouring that second glass of wine before you knew you were going to ask for it”.

But what if you don’t want others to know about the details of your wine stock? “It turns out,” writes Tufekci, “that by watching your butler’s movements, other people can infer a lot about the stock.” Information is visible that would not have been available if he had patiently waited for each of your commands, rather than trying to predict them. Almost all modern microprocessors behave like attentive butlers — and the revealing traces left by their helpful actions mean that information that is supposed to be secret isn’t.

The biggest takeaway from the discovery of Meltdown and Spectre is the realisation of the shakiness of the foundations on which we have constructed our networked world. We have always known that there is no such thing as a completely secure networked device. Now we know that at the heart of every networked device there sits an insecure processor.

Initially, it was thought that the only answer would be to replace all those processors — an unconscionable option. But then it turned out that solutions exist in terms of patches (补丁) to operating system software. The industry is working on those and every conscientious user ought to install them when they become available. But there’s no free lunch here: fixing the problem will slow down processors by an amount that will differ from chip generation to generation. Microsoft, for example, says that patches will “significantly slow down certain servers and affect the performance of some personal computers”. Firing that attentive butler means that you have to fetch your own drinks. And that takes longer. Patience is a virtue, sometimes, even in computing.

About two months ago, I removed Uber Eats from my phone. Not because I didn’t like using it. I loved it. Like most cheap, modern luxuries though, there are hidden costs.

“Restaurants are barely surviving. Delivery apps will kill them” was a headline in a newspaper, one of many stories exploring the unfair sign-up strategies and high fees taken by these tech companies. Moreover, there were reports about bad working conditions for delivery riders, leading to tragic accidents, even deaths. That’s truly unbearable!

I deleted the app and haven’t used it, or any of its competitors, since. Instead of ordering online, now I either cook something or get takeaway nearby. Cooking better food has been a great motivation for me. On lazy nights, I’ve discovered that I can still make a satisfying meal by using whatever ingredients I have on hand. This approach has also saved me much money. As with lots of online shopping, I’d been ordering food without much thought about the cost. Cooking is almost always cheaper and so is old-school takeaway.

These changes have cost me one thing — time. One reason the apps are so popular is that they meet the needs of the convenience-seeking, time-starved individuals. But rather than adding to my stress, having to plan meals again somehow made life less so. Some days it’s been a good motivation to stop work earlier, and engage in activities like going to the shops, or start chopping onions. Walking to pick up takeaway forces you to go for a walk. The change in habit forced me to be on my devices a bit less and to be in my actual life and neighbourhood a bit more.

The process has made me think about how technological advances do save us time, but time for what? For me, the answer was often just more time working, or more time online. Making my own food feels like taking back time I had given up for things far less nourishing (有营养的).