With the recent rise of consumer virtual reality platforms, major hints a big things to come in the realm of augmented reality, and the ever-evolving gaming landscape, it’s clear the future of entertainment is going to be spectacular, thanks to technology. The CEO of Netflix, however, recently suggested the movies and TV shows we enjoy today might someday be replaced by something, well, pharmacological: advanced hallucinogenic drugs.
In a recent WSJD Live interview, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings speculated about the types of entertainment we’ll consume instead of movies, TV shows, and other traditional media in the next the several decades, saying, “Is it VR, is it gaming, is it pharmacological?” Yes, pharmacological — you know, as in drugs. When asked to elaborate, Hastings joked that all you’ll have to do is take a couple of pills to experience entertainment sometime in the future, according to a report by Engadget.
One potential substitute for movies? Netflix's @reedhastings muses on the "pharmacological," like a pill that entertains you. #WSJDLive
— WSJ Tech (@WSJTech) October 25, 2016
“In twenty or fifty years, taking a personalized blue pill, you just hallucinate in an entertaining way, and then a white pill brings you back to normality is perfectly viable,” Hastings said. “If the source of human entertainment in thirty or forty years is pharmacological we’ll be in real trouble.”
With that said, it doesn’t sound like Netflix has any intentions of getting into the pharmacology business or creating something that sounds startlingly similar to the Matrix. But, hell, “Netflix and trip” does have a nice ring to it, right?
Tony Merevick is Cities News Editor at Thrillist and thinks this is hilarious, but will probably stick with movies and TV shows over insane hallucinogenic drugs. Send news tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @tonymerevick.
