i wouldn’t normally be concerned since any company releasing a VR product with this price tag is obviously going to fail… but it’s apple and somehow through exquisite branding and sleek design they have managed to create something that resonated with “tech reviewers” and rich folk who can afford it.
what’s really concerning is that it’s not marketed as a new VR headset, it’s marketed by apple and these “tech reviewers” as the new iphone, something you take with you everywhere and do your daily tasks in, consume content in etc…
and it’s dystopian. imagine you are watching youtube on this thing and when an ad shows up, you can’t look away, even if you try to they can track your eye movement and just move the window, you can’t mute it, you certainly cannot install adblock on it, you are forced to watch the ad until it satisfies apple or you just give up and take out the headset.
this is why i think all these tech giants (google meta apple etc) were/are interested in the “metaverse”. it holds both your vision and your hearing hostage, you cannot do anything else when using it but to just use the thing. a 100% efficiency attention machine, completely blocking you from the outside world.
i’m not concerned about this iteration as much as people are not hyped about this iteration. just like how people are hyped about the next apple vision, i’m more worried about the next iterations with somewhat lower price tag and better software availability. i hope it flops and i know it probably won’t achieve any sort of mainstream adoption even if it’s deemed a success because it probably can’t get less bulky and look less dorky, but the possibility is still worrying. what are your thoughts?
My biggest concern is that everyone will eventually be forced by societal and institutional expectations; for now people can easily choose not to wear them, but if/when your employer requires it for work or if/when the only way to talk to your friends is by using it, then you won’t have much of a choice.
For example, Zoom has very shady ties with the Chinese government (and several reports say that they’ve used it to surveil and censor people), yet many schools and workplaces required it (and many still do now). You could refuse to install/use it, but then you’d lose your job or fail your classes. It’s a similar story for TikTok, Discord, and Facebook before that.
If you’re in America, I wouldn’t worry about the Chinese Government spying on you, and be much more worried about the American government doing it, since they can actually use what they find to prosecute you for crimes real or imagined.
But while it is true that you could get forced into using it by social pressure, my post is about how I really don’t think that the tech has the potential for the kind of mass adoption that would create those conditions. You could be forced to use it by your job, but then when you’re not working you can take it off - compare that to the cell phone in your pocket, which they can already use to call you back into work at all hours of the day, the emails they use to get you to give them free labor outside of working hours, and the other ways in which corporations have gotten their fingers into our off time I just don’t see this as a breakthrough or a new threshold being crossed in any way.
I’m much more concerned about the very real and confirmed ties (see:
) Zoom, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, my ISP, my cell phone service provider, etc have to the security apparatus of the country I actually live in who have actual power and authority over me and a long history of murdering left wing activists.