of vision pro Apple’s long-awaited reality-warping headset, now shipping for a nominal price of $3,499. Despite the eye-watering price, this product is a hit — Apple We sold 200,000 of these things. before it hits the shelves.
Of course, there was no doubt that if any company could bring virtual reality headsets to the masses, it would be Apple. VR isn’t a new technology, but the history of clunky consumer products dates back to the early 1990s. It has experienced a resurgence in recent years, thanks in large part to the huge investment and marketing muscle of his company Meta (née Facebook), which acquired the technology in 2014.
That’s why Vision Pro is an impending disaster for humanity. With Vision Pro, you can ignore reality with just a turn of the knob.
The Oculus Quest headset was a big hit, but it never quite crossed the geeky novelty zone. A wonderful toy to give to children at Christmas. They cling to it for weeks or months, but it quickly gets lost in a drawer, never to be seen again.
Hype products in this category Apple Excellent for. Personal computers, MP3 players, smartphones, and smartwatches were all once clunky geeky novelties until Apple scooped them up and applied its proprietary technology to them. Je ne sais qui, and re-released them as a mass-market sensation. Apple has a knack for making things look nerdy and hip.
The first version of the ski-goggle-like Vision Pro was expensive, questionable, and completely unfinished, but as with Apple, you’d think the company would figure it out over time. There is little doubt. The Watch became widely popular after a messy launch. Prices will drop and Apple will convince you that wearing ski goggles in public is cool.And before you know it, Vision Pro 4 is must have To function in polite society.
That’s why Vision Pro is an impending disaster for humanity.
With Vision Pro, you can ignore reality with just a turn of the knob.
The term “mixed reality” should be a red flag. Our reality is already so mixed that people can hardly distinguish between fantasy and reality. This is mainly thanks to his Apple iPhone. The iPhone started out harmless, but it quickly became the lens through which everyone saw the world and shared that view. And these views are often distorted thanks to technology such as face filters, which can make us look different in age, gender, race, and even ethnicity.
As the “Pro” title suggests, Apple is positioning the Vision Pro as a serious work device rather than a futuristic toy. Apple wants to adopt Vision Pro seriously. But to be honest, gaming and entertainment will have a big impact on the popularity of Vision Pro.The public isn’t going to pick this up. work with spreadsheets.
trapped in the matrix
Image courtesy of Apple Newsroom
Let’s be honest for a moment. Despite all the fuss and hype about spatial computing and virtual workspaces, the Vision Pro is a high-tech product. hallucination machine. Even in its benign form, it cuts you off from the real world and tricks your brain into thinking a spreadsheet is floating in your living room.
Think about how many of us are already shutting out the outside world and staring into the black mirror of our phones. We often ignore our spouses, children, and friends and stare into the distorted world of social media. There, everyone plays some kind of character, whether it’s a political extremist or a guy who bases his entire argument on eating raw organs. The longer we stay in the world of social media, the more outlandish and extreme everyone becomes. Because we no longer interact with each other as human beings, but as blank screens projecting distorted caricatures.
You can put down your phone and walk away, at least for the time being. Soon, it may not be so easy. If technology like Vision Pro becomes mainstream, we may soon be living with digital hallucinations all the time.
Apple’s marketing does nothing to stop this. Vision’s latest ad, titled “First-Timer”, features a man watching a movie alone in total isolation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ8lLdo6x_8First-time users | Apple Vision Prowww.youtube.com
To be fair to Apple, they are trying to make inherently anti-social technology less anti-social. When people approach you in an immersive environment, it’s like they’re coming through the fog. The front display also shows an imitation of your eyes through a technology Apple calls his EyeSight, but the effect is more creepy than welcoming.
But these feel like half-hearted measures designed to make inherently uncomfortable technology more comfortable. We’ve lived in the iPhone world for so long that we often observe ourselves and others becoming hopelessly addicted to our phones. If you remove the simple option of looking up, it’s game over.
I reject your reality and replace it with my reality
Apple has been working on reality-warping technology for years, but it’s been very cautious about rolling it out to Vision Pro. One such technology is his Animojis, introduced in iOS 11 in 2017, which allows you to replace your face with cartoon images such as cats, robots, unicorns, etc. The following year, Apple developed Memojis, customizable avatars.
It’s not inconceivable that we could soon be able to replace people’s heads and faces with anything we choose. Do you think your spouse is ugly? Give him or her a new look. Do you want to admit to being a werewolf? Totally possible. It’s also very likely that Vision Pro users will become so accustomed to such distorted worlds that they will find the unenhanced world ugly, disorienting, and unpleasant.
Apple unveils new Memoji featurewww.youtube.com
You can already reminisce with Vision Pro. Both iPhone 15 Pro and Vision Pro can capture 3D “spatial” photos and videos that you can relive forever in full 3D with Vision Pro.
However, we haven’t even covered the Vision Pro’s strangest feature yet.
digital doppelganger
Vision Pro allows you to make and receive FaceTime calls, but you may be wondering how it works if there’s no way to point the camera at your face. Apple has an outrageous solution, and it might be the creepiest aspect of Vision Pro. Vision Pro scans your face and creates a 3D recreation called a persona. Vision Pro FaceTime calls use a persona instead of a face. The persona is also used to represent the eyes on his EyeSight display on the device.
Vision Pro is inherently anti-human technology. It fundamentally cuts off humans from other humans. Your sense of reality is peppered with optical illusions and digital hallucinations. It can even replace you completely.
This means that while your loved one may be talking to you in person or via FaceTime, they may actually be talking to your animated digital doppelganger rather than you. For now, no one is fooled. The persona looks blurry and weird (perhaps intentionally).
No matter how responsibly Apple approaches this technology, it has chilling implications. It is already possible to “resurrect” a person with a large language model (such as ChatGPT) if you can feed enough of that person’s sentences to the model. It is also possible to reproduce human voices using AI. Using facial scanning technology, it will soon be completely possible to digitally duplicate people.
nightmare for humanity
Many reading this will think I’m being cautious, but most of us didn’t realize the earth-shaking potential of the original iPhone. Some thought it was the future, others thought it was an overpriced toy, but it could spark revolutions and protests, and how it would change the way we date, shop, and interact with each other. Few people could have imagined it. Would there be a “cancel culture” without the iPhone? Was a coronavirus panopticon possible? Will OnlyFans exist? The iPhone has changed nearly every aspect of our lives and culture, and we don’t even have time to appreciate the extent of it.
Vision Pro is inherently anti-human technology. It fundamentally cuts off humans from other humans. Your sense of reality is peppered with optical illusions and digital hallucinations. It can even replace you completely.
Personally, I hope this is a costly fiasco for Apple. I’m struck by the fact that cell phones were already incredibly popular before the iPhone came out, but geek goggles have yet to really catch on despite attempts over the past 30 years. feels comforted. Let’s hope it stays this way.
