The author who coined the term “Metaverse” in his novel Snow Crash wrote a post commenting on the latest news out of Meta.
I encourage you to read the whole thing, titled “My Prodigal Brainchild”, and then come back here as I pick apart some of the specifics where we agree and disagree.
There’s this:
When I was working at Magic Leap, and people asked me why I thought that was a good idea, I would ask the rhetorical question: “do you really think that twenty years from now everyone is still going to be going around all day staring at little rectangles in their hands?” At the time it seemed obvious to me that the answer was no.
Reader, I have changed my mind. Twenty years from now, everyone is still going to be staring at handheld rectangles. Or at least that is the case if the only alternative is wearing things on their faces. Maybe this should have been obvious to me given the amount of time, effort, and money people put into making their faces look as good as possible.
There’s a lot to both agree and disagree with here. I agree that we will still have our hand terminals in 20 years, but there’s also a terrible assumption inherent to people promoting ideas like AR and XR and the Metaverse, and that’s the idea that headsets are to be worn 24/7 in public spaces.
Consider the difference between laptop and desktop computers. One never leaves your home and the other only comes out of a bag when you have a place to sit and work. Dedicated VR headsets as well as a VR-based spatial computer like Vision Pro are a mixture of both of these, featuring portability closer to a laptop with strong tethering to home use of a desktop. To Stephenson’s point about people “making their faces look as good as possible,” Apple Vision Pro solves this in two directions. First, you don’t care about making your face look as good as possible when you are at home. Second, you can focus on making your face look as good as possible exactly once for a face scan and then never worry about it again.
Phones can also be worn on a strap and if, or when, the equivalent of Mac Virtual Display arrives for iPhone, the phone can become a tracked input device while its screen turns off. You can swing an iPhone as a golf club, for example, or as a bat or tennis racket. Its MagSafe connector on back can lock into any number of accessories and Apple’s latest software already shows the way buttons and surfaces on its sides can interact with other devices as a remote control without even needing to glance at the screen. I use my phone all the time to turn down the volume on my TV, for example, without unlocking my device or looking at it.
This issue of public vs. private comes up again here:
When someone’s wearing a head-mounted display, on the other hand, you don’t know whether they are looking at you or not.
Likewise, when someone holds up their phone and aims it at you, it’s obvious that you are on camera. That’s not true in the case of glasses or goggles. So it’s creepy.
I take some pride in seeing Stephenson bring up an issue regarding the Meta Ray-Bans I mentioned multiple times in live podcasts for my previous employer about the social signaling of pulling out your iPhone to take a picture. Wired today also caught up to this trend toward pervert glasses:
And many of the top influencers in the Meta Ray-Ban scene, including Sayed Kaghazi (@itspolokid) and Cameron John (@rizzzcam), who have more than 3 million Instagram followers combined, are men prowling sun-soaked beaches and corridors of city nightlife so they can showcase their attempts to pick up women.
Creeps and perverts only affect others in public spaces. You neither need to feign eye contact nor make others uncomfortable with head-mounted cameras in the privacy of your own home.
There’s also this from Stephenson:
There is no business case for headsets any more.
I outlined this case pretty clearly just yesterday. People love simulation in a VR headset and pay tens of thousands of dollars to practice and train at their hobbies at home with huge opportunity available to make the experience easier, cheaper, and more comfortable.
