Apple(’s) Vision —Building the future or escaping it?
“See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
Most novel technologies are met with ambivalence. And this has been taken to an extreme with virtual reality, especially since Apple Vision Pro was released.
There are those who fear that it will further isolate us from each other, and those who envision a space of infinite potential.
What’s certain: With Apple entering the market a lot more people will open up to this technology, and I expect revolutionary changes.
Between isolation and ingenuity
After Google and Facebook/Meta explored the market, Apple decided to ride along the Virtual Reality wave now as well. Which is unsurprising, but solidifies the vision big tech has for the future.
Essentially, the debate around this vision is based on the question whether VR is solving our problems as a society, escaping them or even creating them.
And lets be honest; Seeing a father play with his kids while wearing a computer mounted to his faces seems awkward — if not scary.
The feeling of unease continues with this devices appearing translucent (like glasses), even though both sides are screens displaying a hyper-realistic model of your face and the outside world respectively.
It all seems like Apple is trying to bring the screen even closer to our eyes. An idea that has been met with criticism in the past, and It brings to mind the image of a cyberpunk-esque dystopia where everybody lives in their own small virtual world.
Even though both Apple and Meta are advertising their products as something that connects people across the globe, putting a physical barrier between us and the real world is likely to lead to more isolation.
In other words, I think advertising Apple Vision Pro as something to wear on a daily basis actually distracts from it’s true potential and only brings back memories of the whole Metaverse fiasco.
Because looking back, Zuckerberg’s “next chapter of the internet” turned out to be a short hype followed by a continuous decline in trust in the company, fueled by both technical and ethical concerns.
Therefore it’s no wonder Apple’s stock price actually dropped slightly with the release of Apple Vision Pro. Most people now think about virtual reality in a much more critical way than they did a year ago.
Instead, Vision Pro should really be a device meant for professional usage. While the “Pro” branding has long made it’s way into the average user’s hands, if what we saw in the WWDC 2023 clips is true, this new form of VR can change the way we think about workspaces and offices for ever. From an engineering perspective alone, it’s more than remarkable.
What’s new is that Vision pro is stand-alone. This is intriguing, because now you get a full-fletched computer with almost infinite screen space in a single package. I even see potential health benefits in not having to sit in the same position all day when working on the computer.
In a world where more and more people work from home, maybe even remote and across the world, having access to an all-in-one office regardless of where you are is truly ingenious.
Not to mention that one of the big problems of our time is a growing population, leading to a deficit in affordable housing. When living in a small space, an infinite virtual world could be attractive.
In the same way however, this can become a thread. It’s the classic sci-fi scenario: As our planet deteriorates, humanity escapes into a virtual reality.
While we’re not anywhere near a Ready Player One kind of world, we as consumers have to think about whether Apple’s or Meta’s vision of the future matches ours.
Invisible instead of visual
Ever since the Metaverse, I’ve thought a lot about alternatives to VR. For example, Augmented Reality is something that seem to integrate much more seamlessly into real-life. As the name says, AR devices do not replace our surroundings with a virtual counterpart, but extend it with things like projections.
Recently I came across Humane and the concept of technology becoming “invisible”. This direct antithesis to big tech’s VR might seem strange at first, but the more I think about it, the more it excites me.
Most products in this area are still rather vague, but the idea can be described as your device working mostly autonomously, powered by AI, to do as much as possible for you with minimal interaction.
And instead of a screen, these interactions are based on a set of audio or gesture instructions.
Imagine going for a walk without having a slab of glass bouncing around in your pocket. You meet people and they aren’t taking a selfie while you are talking to them.
In contrast to an infinite virtual space, there’s a different, simple form of freedom that comes with having to interact less with technology while still getting many of it’s benefits.
I wrote “many”, because there are hurdles too. What about visual content, videos and photos, that build the foundation of social media today?
Whether we like it or not, social media is here to stay. And a lot of people therefore depend on visual content for keeping up with friends or even for work. Take YouTube for example. Between lots of nonsense there also is some of the most valuable content I’ve ever seen. Something like this is hard to imagine without a proper screen.
So Humane specifically might not be the optimal vision for the future, but our devices moving into the background instead of taking up our field of view is a vision I would much rather share.
Building the future or escaping it?
In the end, It’s up to us. Are we fine with moving parts of our life completely into the digital world? Aren’t we doing this already?
If so, the inevitable rise of virtual reality can be an absolutely positive development.
On the other hand, we see all the time how easily technology can distract us from what we really want.
But completely isolating oneself from new technologies is only another form of escapism. What about a path somewhere in between? That means staying connected to reality with all it’s problems, while using our modern-day superpowers to build the future we want to live in.
“But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places”
