Apple Vision Pro and the Great Lie of Spatial Computing
“Unlike television, nature doesn’t steal time, it amplifies it.” —Richard Louv
"What Orwell failed to predict was that we’d buy the cameras ourselves, and that our biggest fear would be that nobody was watching." —Keith Jensen
This week Apple’s biggest product innovation in years hit American shelves. The Apple Vision Pro; spatial computing, augmented reality goggles. Spatial computing meaning, you don't need a keyboard, or a mouse. You move the mouse” with your eyes, you wave your hands around in the air to click. To someone watching from the outside, it looks like someone who is “seeing things'' that aren’t there. It’s like the first time you saw or heard someone having a conversation with AirPods in, and it seemed like they were talking to themselves. So yes, there is a moment of cultural adjustment that is happening, and it will be common for folks to poke fun at the early adopters who are trying these things out in public. These devices are $3500 right now and are chunky and clunky. The Apple true believers are rushing in to try them out. The rest of us are standing on the sidelines watching.
So are these things going to catch on? Or is this just another dead end product experiment?
My sense is, this is gen 1, these devices will become much cheaper and sleeker in the next few years. Augmented reality will be ubiquitous in a few years time. If that is so, I want to take a few moments to share my thoughts on the topic. The iPhone had a historic impact on the way we live and interact with each other and “the more than human world”. My sense is, this technologically will take that to another level and we need to be ready.
Before the iPhone, internet addition was considered to be 40-80 hours of use per week. That was harder to do when you had to sit down and log on. You couldn’t bring the laptop into the bathroom as easily, or along on your hike. The transportability, the ease of the iphone meant that we could spend more and more time on our devices, doing more on them, and drawing us inexorably further and further away from our own senses and the outdoors.
The iphone made social media what it is today, it gave birth to scrolling and FOMO.
In a few short years the average American was spending more than 11 hours per day looking at a screen.
Americans are now spending more than 90% of our lives indoors.
Children in the US spend more than 8 hours per day on screens outside of school and less than 1 hour outdoors per day.
Almost 20% of children in the United States are obese. Not entirely due to screens and social media, but certainly sedentism and nature deficit disorder is a huge factor.
The physical and mental health effects of social media on children in particular have been devastating. Depression and anxiety levels in young people have skyrocketed. Attention spans have shrunk dramatically. Many have lost the ability to be with themselves, to tolerate silence, to reflect.
And we’ve all read the reports of tech company CEOs who limit their kids' use of screens or put their kids in private schools that limit or eliminate screen use altogether. Much like fast food company CEOs who would never eat their own products.
I am 47 years old. I didn’t get a smart phone until I was 36. I struggle everyday with Instagram. It is an addictive app. I am an outdoor guide and educator who knows the benefits of getting outside, of meditation and self-regulation, or exercise and nutrition. I am about as strong and capable as one could hope to be to counterbalance this technology and I struggle with controlling and limiting my use of these technologies every single day.
What kind of impossible situation are we putting our children in when we hand them these devices before they have developed a sense of self or self-discipline, a connection with the natural world, a spiritual life, strong and stable relationships, solid communication skills, the ability to reflect and discern, or appropriate risk taking in real life?
With the release of the Vision Pro, the phone won’t be in your hand or in your pocket, it will be wrapped around your face. You will now be inside the machine, looking through goggles projecting screens into 3-d space around us. You might be in a warzone, a trailer park, a drab-apartment, an old basement, an airplane, or a bus, but now you can transform your perception of that space to a tropical island, a mountain top, or an open prairie at sunset. Not a bad thing to do from time to time I suppose, but what if that fake world in your goggles is vastly better than the reality we inhabit?
The possible benefits of this technology are many, if you want to learn more about those, watch the videos apple is producing to sell the product. The dangers are also many and we have to think about how to mitigate them. Here are just a few:
Nature Deficit Disorder on Steroids: Why go outside or get to know your local environment when you can travel virtually to any stunning location without getting up from your chair? We know that caretaking behaviors emerge from a deep bond with place. The goggles will accelerate our mass migration from “in real life” experiences to virtual, augmented reality, spatial computing experiences. The deeper the divide between humans and nature, the less likely caretaking actions become, the deeper into ecological danger we sink.
Neglected Homes: If immersive, unlimited worlds, become closer to us, why should we not assume that we will be drawn to them more and more in the same way that our phones have pulled our attention away from more analogue activities? How weird will it be for a child to see a parent wearing these goggles, seeing things they aren’t seeing. It is similar to when our babies see us on our phones but the goggles add another layer of distance. For some people, especially folks suffering with depression, anxiety, and/or addictive traits and tendencies, this augmented world could become all consuming. What IRL responsibilities might fall by the wayside? Why keep up your interior design? What about the yard? Plants? Pets? Might the pull of the augmented/virtual world pull us further away from Creation? I keep thinking about the living spaces of people on crystal meth. I'm probably exaggerating the risks here but I’ve seen “Idiocracy”, if you haven’t its worth a watch. As this tech becomes more and more immersive, isn’t it likely that you would have an avatar whose whole existence takes place on the new, fully immersive internet that is under construction? That's a topic for another day.
The Carbon Footprint Issue: Leaders at the World Economic Forum (WEF) have already stated publicly that in the (not too distant) future the wealthy will be able to afford to physically travel to different locations, but that for many it will not be affordable (carbon taxes? Inflation?). Augmented reality has been touted as a way to grant access to the lower classes to travel and attend events (concerts, shows, gatherings) without the “carbon footprint”. And you thought iPhones replacing lighters at concerts was disappointing, wait until the concert gets replaced because you went inside the phone?!?! Augmented reality and spatial computing are a potentially powerful pacifier to the masses who may be asked to lock down, shelter in place, or minimize travel during future pandemics or under climate change policy mitigation efforts being sought through global governance institutions like the WEF.
Pornography, Fertility, and Declining Birth Rates: Pornhub is one of the top 10 most visited sites in the world with over 3 billion visits per year. Pornography addiction is an epidemic of global proportions and is associated with human trafficking and abuse, the objectification of human beings, and is devastating people's lives, marriages, relationships, and ability to effectively procreate. Now, these experiences will become more immersive, more real, and merging with AI to create interactive, non-human avatars. Why leave home at all? I mean really. Zillow can already put you inside a home that is for sale in 3D, you don’t think PornHub has plans? Middle School, High School and College kids will be exploring these worlds before parents will have known what hit them. Are we ready for that? Are we okay with that?
Hopelessness: Gen Z has a major deficiency of hope for a brighter tomorrow. All the doom forecasting, the apocalyptic fantasizing, the ecological scenarios, the global challenges, and the 24/7 access to every heart wrenching disaster have inundated our children’s hearts and Souls. Who can blame them for retreating into glimmering realms from which to escape the hell we’ve curated for them? We need to face reality, not hide from it. The pollyannish depictions of how this technology will be used are insulting for anyone who has seen the shadow that doesn’t get mentioned in the advertising.
Disconnection from Reality: There are already AI facial apps that allow you to change the face of the person you are talking with to celebrities. Maybe you’d prefer I looked like Brad Pitt, but what happens when I take the goggles off? What kind of filters can we put on ourselves if we don’t want to do the hard work of accepting ourselves as we actually or? Or taking the difficult steps to improve ourselves through self-discipline and dedication when I can just change myself with a click? Wildfires in our backyard? Invasive species tangling our forests? A new development going in next door? Why deal with all of that when I can be on an interstellar cruiser exploring pristine worlds, having sex with exotic extraterrestrials, and having my meals delivered to my door with Grub Hub?
I don’t think we should minimize the impact that this technology is going to have on all of our lives. I don’t think we should forget or ignore the mistakes we made collectively with the introduction of screens on children that happened over the last 20 years. The loss of innocence, of wonder, the lost time outdoors in nature, the premature exposure to pornography, the overwhelm and numbing of unmediated exposure to global events for young people has been nothing short of catastrophic for kids. As adults, as parents, teachers, and caregivers, it’s our job to protect our kids from influences that threaten to rob them of their innocence, their purity of heart, and their childhoods. And we definitely should not assume or expect that massive, for-profit corporations have our best interest at heart.
When the iPhone came out, could we anticipate the degree to which it would dominate our lives? The way it would steal our attention, pull us into the bowels of the world wide web? Could we have imagined we’d be glued to it 11+ hours per day, barely being touched by the sun, addicted to thousands of tiny dopamine hits per day. Probably not. We were enticed by the sparkle, by how shiny it was, by the promises of the maker. But it was snake oil and so is this. How much attention and time will be lost in this dead end diversion from our humanity? We don’t need this technology. This is bad medicine. This is a Black Mirror. This is a prison without walls so we can live small in the miracle of Creation, but live big in the illusion of the web 3.0. We deserve to live in and care for a beautiful, healthy, vibrant, sacred, living Earth. That is our charge, not to relegate ourselves to stuffy cubicles, swiping at thin air like ghosts in a dream.
