<story><title>Notes on Vision Pro</title><url>https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Vision%20Pro</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jstanley</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re taking a backwards-looking view of this.&lt;p&gt;Imagine if ancient man, living in the woods, saw people of today living in cities. &amp;quot;It feels very uncomfortable seeing all of these people isolating themselves inside buildings&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;In fact the very opposite is the case. Now, we go into &lt;i&gt;nature&lt;/i&gt; to isolate ourselves.&lt;p&gt;In the future, going into virtual reality will be where you go to interact with others, and you&amp;#x27;ll take the goggles &lt;i&gt;off&lt;/i&gt; to isolate yourself.&lt;p&gt;There are enormous advantages to living (as much as possible of) your life in VR:&lt;p&gt;- your home can be arbitrarily large at zero cost and without taking any land away from anyone else&lt;p&gt;- you can change the decor whenever you want at zero cost&lt;p&gt;- you can paint walls as ornately as you like, at zero cost, immediately, without even any prep work required&lt;p&gt;- you spend zero time on travelling&lt;p&gt;- you can instantly hang out with friends in foreign countries for free without even needing a visa&lt;p&gt;As long as the technology is good enough (and please remember that qualifier, because people normally respond with an implicit assumption that the technology is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; good enough) - &lt;i&gt;as long as the technology is good enough&lt;/i&gt; VR is strictly better than current reality.</text></item><item><author>jb1991</author><text>I use quite a few Apple products every day of the last 10 years, and I’m very impressed with certainly all the technology and reviews and explanations of how this device works and what the user experience will be. However, this is the first Apple device that really makes me pause. All of the marketing material, the WWDC videos, all of it feels very uncomfortable to see all these people isolating themselves in a room with big goggles on. I find it really hard to comprehend this is the direction that technology is taking our lives. Imagine walking into a house, and a lot of the people are just sitting around by themselves in corners with goggles on.  The whole thing just feels very strange and post apocalyptic to me.&lt;p&gt;And these 3D spacial moment recordings, imagine children growing up in a house where when something nice happens, the parent rushes to put on goggles and stare at them through them, their little virtual eyes displayed on the outside, it’s frankly creepy to me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>alexvoda</author><text>&amp;gt; There are enormous advantages to living (as much as possible of) your life in VR:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; - your home can be arbitrarily large at zero cost and without taking any land away from anyone else&lt;p&gt;Except it isn&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; - you can change the decor whenever you want at zero cost&lt;p&gt;Except you can&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; - you can paint walls as ornately as you like, at zero cost, immediately, without even any prep work required&lt;p&gt;Except you can&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; - you spend zero time on travelling&lt;p&gt;Except you don&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; - you can instantly hang out with friends in foreign countries for free without even needing a visa&lt;p&gt;Except you don&amp;#x27;t.&lt;p&gt;This is an incredibly dystopian view.&lt;p&gt;Let&amp;#x27;s not kid ourselves that VR will not be monetized to the breaking point just like any other platform. Enshitification is inevitable.&lt;p&gt;In other words, corporations will do what they already do, sell lies, create demand for those lies and in exchange demand more of the irreplaceable things like time, land and resources.</text></comment>
<story><title>Notes on Vision Pro</title><url>https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Vision%20Pro</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jstanley</author><text>You&amp;#x27;re taking a backwards-looking view of this.&lt;p&gt;Imagine if ancient man, living in the woods, saw people of today living in cities. &amp;quot;It feels very uncomfortable seeing all of these people isolating themselves inside buildings&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;In fact the very opposite is the case. Now, we go into &lt;i&gt;nature&lt;/i&gt; to isolate ourselves.&lt;p&gt;In the future, going into virtual reality will be where you go to interact with others, and you&amp;#x27;ll take the goggles &lt;i&gt;off&lt;/i&gt; to isolate yourself.&lt;p&gt;There are enormous advantages to living (as much as possible of) your life in VR:&lt;p&gt;- your home can be arbitrarily large at zero cost and without taking any land away from anyone else&lt;p&gt;- you can change the decor whenever you want at zero cost&lt;p&gt;- you can paint walls as ornately as you like, at zero cost, immediately, without even any prep work required&lt;p&gt;- you spend zero time on travelling&lt;p&gt;- you can instantly hang out with friends in foreign countries for free without even needing a visa&lt;p&gt;As long as the technology is good enough (and please remember that qualifier, because people normally respond with an implicit assumption that the technology is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; good enough) - &lt;i&gt;as long as the technology is good enough&lt;/i&gt; VR is strictly better than current reality.</text></item><item><author>jb1991</author><text>I use quite a few Apple products every day of the last 10 years, and I’m very impressed with certainly all the technology and reviews and explanations of how this device works and what the user experience will be. However, this is the first Apple device that really makes me pause. All of the marketing material, the WWDC videos, all of it feels very uncomfortable to see all these people isolating themselves in a room with big goggles on. I find it really hard to comprehend this is the direction that technology is taking our lives. Imagine walking into a house, and a lot of the people are just sitting around by themselves in corners with goggles on.  The whole thing just feels very strange and post apocalyptic to me.&lt;p&gt;And these 3D spacial moment recordings, imagine children growing up in a house where when something nice happens, the parent rushes to put on goggles and stare at them through them, their little virtual eyes displayed on the outside, it’s frankly creepy to me.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DonaldPShimoda</author><text>Asimov kind-of wrote about this phenomenon in 1956&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;The Naked Sun&amp;quot;, the second of his Elijah Bailey series. I won&amp;#x27;t give plot spoilers, but the main connection is that a group of people on another planet have grown accustomed to virtual holographic &amp;quot;viewing&amp;quot; being the main mode of interacting with other people, while physically being in their presence is deemed unwholesome, embarrassing, or otherwise uncouth, causing people to go to great extents to avoid it.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know that Vision Pro is necessarily taking us on that sort of path; I&amp;#x27;ll probably hold my judgment until they&amp;#x27;ve proliferated enough that I actually know someone who has one. But your point that the virtual world is becoming where we go to interact with other people while physical spaces are used for individual isolation is a good one, and my contribution here is to tie it to a book that is over 65 years old to show that it&amp;#x27;s not even a particularly new idea.</text></comment>