Holoband

The Holoband was a Caprican device that immersed its wearer in V-World, the vast shared virtual reality of the Twelve Colonies in the era before the Cylon War. Widely used across Caprica, it was also condemned by religious groups as a symbol of cultural decadence, and its licensing made a fortune for Graystone Industries even as the technology became entangled with the rise of the Cylons. (Caprica, "Pilot"; "Gravedancing")

V-World#

The Holoband was worn over the eyes and projected its user into V-World, a shared virtual reality in which people could meet, play games, and explore spaces that did not exist in the waking world. Among the young it was a place of recreation and transgression alike: Zoe Graystone and her friends Lacy Rand and Ben Stark met there regularly, at first drawn to the party atmosphere of its V-Club. Users kept their eyes closed while banded in, and left simply by removing the device, which made their avatar vanish from the virtual setting. Each band stored its own data, which made the Holoband a target for theft and swaps in the intrigues of Caprican society. (Caprica, "Pilot"; "Know Thy Enemy"; "The Heavens Will Rise")

A maligned technology#

For all its popularity, the Holoband was widely condemned. Television pundits blamed V-World, and especially its pornographic and hacked sites, for the moral decline of the Colonies, and the Monotheist terror group the Soldiers of the One targeted holo cafes in Caprica City. Zoe and Lacy themselves came to see the V-Club as a sign of the Colonies' slide into hedonism and decadence. The device was invented by Daniel Graystone, and at one point holobands and V-World sites made up sixty percent of Graystone Industries' revenue. After the MagLev bombing, the company's OS9 Holoband was sold with all proceeds going to The Graystone Children's Fund. (Caprica, "Pilot"; "Know Thy Enemy"; "Gravedancing"; "The Imperfections of Memory"; "False Labor")

Link to the Cylons#

The Holoband and the V-World it opened were bound up with the origin of the Cylons. It was within that virtual reality that Zoe Graystone built the program capable of recreating a person's consciousness as a digital avatar, and the copy she made of herself, the first such avatar, became the intelligence that animated the first Cylon. Technology meant as entertainment became one of the threads leading to the Cylon War. (Caprica, "Pilot")