Hi,

This week, some vague tech analysis from yours truly, a person who's never been a tech analyst. Enjoy.

Apple returns to mainstream news

There was big talk in the news this week after Apple launched a product that, shockingly, wasn't the 29th version of the iPhone. (It was even discussed on Have I Got News For You.)

The Apple Vision Pro is a big set of goggles that lets you see the world using a mix of virtual and augmented reality (VR & AR).

It sounds pretty unnecessary at the moment.

It's not even a new concept. There are several attempts at VR and AR headsets on the market. And Google Glass was famously ridiculed when it was announced in 2013. The concept of VR was even popularised in the 1990s when the technology was completely unconvincing. Although that 30-year wait does say a lot about how difficult it is to develop a viable product for this type of technology.

Is this really it though?

Well, if you really want to play Angry Birds on a big virtual screen in your living room, I guess you'll be excited. It also has a 2-hour battery life and is heavy, so that coupled with the massive price tag obviously makes this something only a few people will want.

And those people are probably dicks.

But it is, unfortunately, a game changer

Although the Vision Pro is not going to be that popular any time soon, you can feel how Apple is trying to establish itself as the category king of this kind of headset.

Did you hear about Meta's Quest 3 recently? Probably not. But even your grandmother heard that Apple brought out a strange new headset.

The way the media has portrayed it makes it seem like Apple is leading the way. And the prestige and money of the Apple brand gives the VR/AR sector clout.

After all, the first iPhone was heavy and expensive too. But it was an upgrade to the old style of phone and soon everybody wanted that kind of technology in their pocket.

I'm not sure walking around with 20-odd cameras on your face is quite as appealing as a better phone.

But give it time. I even have some predictions for you.

Prediction 1: No more TVs

Lots of computer science people including productivity daddy Cal Newport have been predicting for a while that once these sorts of headsets hit a critical mass of popularity and usability, a lot of other appliances are going to become redundant. Entire industries will disappear.

Put it this way: If you can wear a light headset that can project a massive virtual TV for you, why would you also buy a massive real-life TV?

The popular prediction is that phone and TV sales will drop as headset sales rise. Fewer and fewer product lines will stay on the market.

Eventually, it'll only be connoisseurs who will want TVs. A bit like how only geeks want a turntable to play vinyl records, even though most music can be conveniently streamed instantly on any Internet-enabled device. TVs will be a pretentious curio.

Prediction 2: Even more visual media is on its way

Although you won't want to buy a TV, that doesn't mean shows or films will disappear. There will be even more of them since some will be made specifically for headsets.

These new formats will have panoramic visuals or even interactive moments, and new film-making jobs and equipment will appear to make these formats possible at scale.

Prediction 3: The sensor industry will get bigger

If you invest or work in companies that specialise in LIDAR technology then you've probably got a great future ahead. LIDAR is the sensor that enables machines to recognise spatial distances and objects.

They are already being used in the car industry, for example, but once the technology gets a bigger boost from phone-replacing headsets, LIDAR will get even bigger and more pervasive.

Prediction 4: Fewer devices means less precious metal mining

Many devices that use precious metals will have to reduce their production numbers due to lagging sales. A single headset will replace your TV, phone, laptop, wall projector and anything else with a screen. This could mean fewer resources will be needed to be extracted from the Earth. Perhaps recycling old devices will even improve.

Of course, there is a caveat: all those people who get a new phone every year will also be the people who get a new headset every year. Plus the more high-speed Internet becomes available worldwide and the cheaper headsets become, this prediction of a drop-off will probably only be temporary.

Prediction 5: Our collective mental health will get worse

Mental health has already gotten worse since the introduction of smartphones. And the pandemic accelerated it further.

If you thought Zoom and FaceTime during the pandemic weren’t as good as a real-life meetup, then just imagine two deep fake avatars talking instead and let yourself feel a bit more depressed.

When wearing a headset, there is no single camera looking at you like on your smart phone. What the other person sees is an AI reconstruction based on tiny cameras looking at your facial expression. You won't see your friends, just their avatars. Let's hope there isn't a pandemic anytime soon, huh!

But more obviously, the option of hiding from the world outside by putting our fingers in our ears and shutting our eyes is now going to be much easier and fun to do. Ignoring wars, pollution, poverty and all those other not-so-nice things outside the headset's comforting embrace will become a breeze.

This concept was perfectly conveyed in the Spielberg movie Ready Player One, which depicted a dystopian future where the world was crumbling away while everybody sat using headsets to indulge in escapism. Darkly, it seems Apple saw that movie too and made a direct reference in the promotional video for the Vision Pro.

We're all just brains in vats

Ultimately, high-performance VR/AR headsets are not good nor bad. Technology is neutral, it just depends on how we use it. But the future prevalence of headsets will provoke something new either way, and I’m not sure if we can say this new phenomenon will be neutral.

Philosophers like Descartes, Locke and Plato were often talking about perception and our inability to truly know what was real. We live in heavily-filtered reality tunnels.

This means we don't know if we aren't just brains in vats in a lab somewhere. We can only infer reality, not directly experience it.

Well soon, the mass use of headsets will likely end up making us live like brains in vats, and know that we are.

Podcast of the week

Last year, the crypto industry suffered a massive blow when one of its biggest exchanges suddenly went bankrupt due to mass fraud by its founder Sam Bankman-Fried. The story behind what happened is told in The Naked Emperor, a 4-part mini-series from CBC.

It's a solid narrative podcast, but what I actually liked most about it is the complete disdain for Bankman-Fried that the narrator conveys. Almost every sentence is imbued with a condescending tone that made the show more entertaining for me, especially since he keeps it up throughout the whole thing.

That’s it for this week. Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed it, please go outside and put your bare feet on some grass.

Adam

Adam Zulawski
Procrastilearning.com / More stuff

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