February 5, 2024

HMMMMMM: Apple’s ‘Vision Pro’ Is the Infancy of Technology That Society Will Soon Revolve Around.

In 2022, I wrote about how the big players in the tech industry are attempting to be the first to reach the building of a virtual reality world where people can work, play, interact, go to school, hold meetings, and live with each other seamlessly. At this time, the concept is called “The Oasis,” based on a book called “Ready Player One” (now also a movie by Steven Spielberg) written by Ernest Cline.

The concept of “The Oasis” is so seductive that Mark Zuckerberg has been racing to its creation, even going so far as to rename his company “Meta” and put a lot of time and effort into developing VR technology and interactivity with the “Oculus” and the “Metaverse.” Something very similar happened in the book for the company that developed The Oasis. It’s even rumored that Zuck hands out the book to the employees who work on the Metaverse.

Why race to The Oasis?

Because whoever controls it effectively controls the world.

Whoever creates the dominant VR realm will become a central business hub for corporations worldwide. Billions of people will don their headsets and haptics to go to work, hang out with friends, go on adventures, watch professional sports, movies, or shows, tour museums, go to class, play video games, and more. As Cline wrote in his novel, so huge will this virtual world be that it will even have its own political system.

It will totally change the way we live, work, and socialize, and the company that gets there first will become so powerful and wealthy that it’s hard to fathom it.

The only thing holding these companies back right now is just that the tech necessary for this kind of thing hasn’t been perfected yet…but it’s getting closer all the time.

Apple, for instance, just proved that it has actually made some real progress, at least in terms of the visual aspect of it with its new Apple Vision Pro.

Last week, Apple released its commercial for the product, attempting to show off what it can do, but it frankly fell short of getting the message across despite the show-and-tell looking like something straight out of a sci-fi movie of the near future. However, one of the Apple Vision Pro’s users uploaded their own demo of the product, and you can see just how impressive this tech actually is.

Star Trek debuted on NBC in 1966. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey first hit theaters in 1968. Walter Cronkite was showing the future of household computing on his 21st Century TV show in 1967. Which means we’ve been conditioned for nearly 60 years to the idea that we would be sitting and typing in front of video screens working and communicating with others. Star Trek’s tricorder and 2001’s flat panel newspads conditioned us as well that some of these screens would be small and handheld. With the exception of a few elderly luddite holdouts, nearly everyone today has a cell phone, and thanks to 15 years or so of updates, by now most of these phones have some “smart” capabilities such as cameras, texting, and apps. Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web is accessible in some form from virtually every type of computing device, from desktop PCs and laptops to iPads and iPhones to the Roku box for TV sets.

But Apple goggles are in their infancy. According to Fast Company last year, the original goal was to sell glasses, but,“One Apple insider told [Business Week] that the company is at least four years away from delivering a smaller ‘glasses’ design. A number of miniaturization breakthroughs are needed to fit powerful chips and battery power inside the smaller-form factor, industry sources have told Fast Company.”

The key word there for battery power is eventually being “inside.” As for now, though: The One Part of the Vision Pro That Apple Doesn’t Want You to See. Apple’s latest series of Vision Pro demos carefully obscures one important hardware feature.

So what, if anything, will be the killer app for early adopters that could make the concept stick, even if it makes today’s early adaptors feel like 1980s laser disc buyers, when players for the five-inch DVD finally rolled out in 1996?

UPDATE: Apple Vision Pro Turned the Real World Into a Black Mirror Episode Overnight.

“The good news is that there’s very little chance of that sci-fi dystopian future coming to pass anytime soon. The viral content around the Vision Pro so far is just that: Content made by professional posters that is purposefully outlandish and provocative in order to get a reaction.”

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll