> People will be able to form romantic relationships and stronger friendships from across the world.
Romantic relationships without physical proximity sounds totally dystopian to me.
Ultimately (as has always been true) the internet's greatest power has always been its reach. With free ubiquitous reliable video conferencing, you now have the ability to get to know someone anywhere in the world.
From a dating PoV you're basically getting a 2-3 order magnitude bump in potential partners. For many, I can see people giving up on the physical (in the short term) to find an emotional match a worthwhile tradeoff!
YMMV - my own life now sprawls the whole globe, things like WhatsApp made maintaining global family ties so so so much easier in ways people really take for granted now. My parents used to arrange by post a preset time for a 5 minute phonecall when they wanted to call their parents internationally. All trends point to remote connectivity getting more and more high fidelity.
But even if you're not very into socializing online. You'll be able to sit and work at an EMPTY desk, with no monitor and no mouse, put on your lightweight headset, and suddenly have 3 large monitors appear in front of you which you can manipulate with your hands (think Minority Report, Tom Cruise), while working in a more aesthetically pleasing environment.
You'll be able to sit in your empty living room, put on your VR headset, and suddenly have a 100 inch TV in front of you to watch movies -- without having to buy this TV in real life.
Buying a monitor may seem as ridiculous as buying a fax machine.
If this fantasy technology were actually invented (and made comfortable to wear and affordable) then I'd buy it, sure, but I'll believe that when I see it.
You'd have to think Apple could do the trick with their history of building integrated hardware/software experiences and a similar war chest, but it's also far enough away from the core products of most of the giants that some outsider might get there first.