As the founder of Second Life and CEO of High Fidelity, I’ve spent my career working on virtual worlds and VR, so robots are somewhat outside my area of expertise. But I wanted to throw out an idea that I think lots of different people and companies could start working on, and whose impact could be great for our country. As a country and economy we are on the ropes right now, and I think VR could be used to help make a comeback.

America has earned it’s well-deserved place in history partly by inventing and manufacturing things for the rest of the world — things like cars, or airplanes, or personal computers. We are still making amazing things, but those things are often software, and most Americans aren’t working in the software industry. The social challenges we see today have arisen partly because the economic benefits that come with being involved in creating and building are being experienced by an increasingly narrow segment of our country.

Also, jobs and the populations that want those jobs are no longer as easy to align geographically. Many skilled workers consider their hometowns an important part of their identity. They want an acceptable standard of living while maintaining that identity. Meanwhile, businesses are anxious to consolidate and automate to drive down their costs. The idea of a small factory in a mid-size town no longer makes the most economic sense.

By using VR headsets to remotely control robots, we could create both a new way for Americans to work, and a new industry around robotics. And this could apply to all American workers, not just entrepreneurs or technologists.