Doubts and criticisms of Vision Pro for the price and lack of practicality. These devices will also have to overcome another problem: the sense of isolation inherent in immersive experiences.
Almost a decade after the Google Glass flop, Apple has announced its upcoming hybrid reality device, Vision Pro.
Doubts about Vision Pro
The announcement of the Cupertino company has become viral but has aroused divisive reactions and collected a chorus of perplexities: the company’s new product seems carefully designed, but the Vision Pro does not seem practical nor comfortable to wear. From the videos and images shared by the company, we can in fact deduce that the device is bulky and connected to an external battery. Added to the doubts about wearability is the astronomical price: $3,499.
For example, Wired rejected the innovative product, predicting a flop;
"When the new $3,499 mixed reality headset goes on sale in 2024, there is no doubt that the most diehard fans of the Cupertino-based company and aficionados of virtual (VR) and augmented (AR) reality will happily line up with their sleeping bags in front of the Apple Store doors. Nor can it be ruled out that some gamers will also get on the bandwagon.
But there’s no way the rest of us will. We’re not talking about a "revolutionary" gadget, although Tim Cook seems confident when he tries to sell it to us as such. Indeed, it is one of Apple’s rare missteps and a sign of how the company is losing its ability to transform tech news for geeks into must-haves for the rest of the people as well. The Vision Pro is not a preview of the future, but rather an indication that Cupertino does not have a clear vision of the future".
Apple’s VR headset, like others before it, is a device for augmented reality, that is, it allows users to interact with virtual elements while integrating part of the real world. Passing through the real world is an aspect Apple focused on during the launch of Vision Pro, presenting the viewer as an object that can be worn without distancing oneself from reality.
The risk of isolation
In the coming years, headsets will probably become thinner, less bulky, and easier to wear. However, these devices will also have to overcome another problem: the feeling of isolation typical of immersive experiences.
After the social isolation imposed by governments during the pandemic three-year period, now we want, through the lure of innovation, comfort, and entertainment, to convince people to embrace the artificial paradises of technology and isolate themselves more and more in digital cages.
The video with which Apple presented the Vision Pro shows, in fact, people who fix the device to their heads with the batteries stuffed in their pockets, then lie down on their sofa and immerse themselves in the experience of a movie on their personal giant screens. Alone. And here one thinks of the phenomenon of hikikomori children, on the one hand, and of the artificial paradise offered by psychedelia, on the other.
Artificial paradises
Not surprisingly, Elon Musk openly mocked Vision Pro. For the tycoon, neither the price nor the utility are convincing. For Musk, it would not be necessary to spend 3,499 dollars to see augmented reality, given that for only 20 dollars one can easily buy hallucinogenic mushrooms capable of producing the same effect.
And here we pass from high technology to psychedelia and techno-shamanism. The DMT guru, Terence McKenna, has repeatedly underlined the dimension of the "dream" that distinguishes the psychedelic experience, even going as far as to promote escape from ordinary reality to take refuge in the tryptamine dream world.
This vision, in which psychedelia and technology touch each other, leads towards a digital future in which man will be hybridized with machines, and his conscience will abandon itself to the artificial paradise of virtual reality.
In an attempt to free themselves from the chains of Maya, psychonauts end up drowning their consciences in the illusion of dreams: psychedelics offer them direct contact with the divine, a fast route to access the Matrix. And once psychedelics are "outdated", virtual intelligence will allow us to achieve this dream.
In this vision, technology, animism, shamanism, and magic come into contact: the technopagans, in fact, believe that the magic of the past and the technology of the future are the same things (a bit like the figure of the magician/scientist Rotwang in the film Metropolis) and based on a holistic view of the world where everything is interconnected, they introduce technology into their rituals.
Except today this technology produces devices that seem to function more like Aldous Huxley’s Soma than as a means to free man from Maya. That is, they present themselves as a Trojan horse, a method of control and surveillance that risks pushing people more and more to isolate themselves, to live immersed in another reality, alienated and, above all, alone.
Original article published on Money.it Italy 2023-06-13 08:00:00. Original title: Apple: Vision Pro, i rischi di isolamento sociale della realtà aumentata
