Jaron Lanier is considered a pioneer of virtual reality technology and developed the first commercial VR hardware with his company VPL Research. Among other things, he built the first data glove in 1986 on behalf of NASA.
A few days ago Apple brought its virtual reality headset onto the market and the first reviews are mixed: On the one hand, revolutionary and sophisticated technology, on the other hand, it is heavy and sometimes buggy and the old inherent VR problems are still not solved, primarily: isolation of the user from its environment and a big question mark regarding the use cases.
Hier ein paar Links zu einigen der Reviews: The Verge (“Magic until it’s not”), Reddit (“I cringed into the future”), John Gruber (“it feels like using the Force”), Andrej Karpathy (“it was rushed a bit to just ship”), Rob Hornig (“a device that is designed to control what you see”), iFixit x-rayed and disassembled the thing and Casey Newstat skates with it through New York City. Consensus: Mixed but also great but also shaky and you don’t know for sure.
In the New Yorker, the aforementioned VR pioneer Jaron Lanier has now written down his thoughts on the introduction of Apple’s VR/AR headset and his attempt to bring together both his early enthusiasm and his modern disillusionment makes this one of the most interesting texts about the Vision Pro .
He describes his 1980s dreams of a VR technology that would allow users to “play(ing) the world into existence” and becomes almost psychedelic when he describes VR as “enabling a different geometry of bodily experience.” But he also writes about how current digital environments psychologically manipulate the user through attention economic conditions, and that should VR one day become established, it will again be monetary corporate interests that will set the conditions of this reality.
The virtual suggests an infinity, and “Infinity is a fake drug, but a powerful one”. But: “There are no infinities, only S curves.”
Technical culture often longs for freedom from finitude. A profound truth, however, is that the greatest mysteries are found in conserved systems, which can become rich and complex, not in infinite ones, which stretch out like blank white sheets to the edge of the cosmos.
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I haven’t been able to test the Apple Vision Pro myself yet, but aside from Lanier’s great writing, I’ve still had my own thoughts. In a report in Vanity Fair magazine, Apple designer Richard Howarth said there was “nothing that could have been done to make the device smaller and lighter,” while Tim Cook raved about having Ted Lasso projected on the ceiling on the sofa seen lying down.
Both statements point to the fundamental problems of VR hardware: complicated application and isolation. Complicated because it’s difficult, you have a constant screen in your face and long-term use of the technology for hours seems questionable. And what’s the use of watching the VR Ted Lasso projected on the ceiling if you can’t turn away from the action for a moment to look at your partner watching the film and exchange a quick look and a quick laugh because such and such a scene was somehow great .
There are also much more pragmatic, unromantic objections to virtual reality. At least in this first generation, Apple doesn’t seem to be getting much out of the principle of so-called “spatial computing”: A large part of the applications are rendered flat on virtual windows that now float in space instead of physically glowing behind the keyboard of my laptop. Like Benedict Evans, I don’t understand the usefulness here: data and texts and files are not three-dimensional units.
There’s a reason why the desk in our offices hasn’t evolved much in hundreds of years, basically since the invention of the table a thousand years ago. In order to work, especially as knowledge workers, we need clarity and an overview. One-dimensional information processing is too slow because of its sequential nature, but three-dimensional information processing seems to me to simply add unnecessary complexity for little to no benefit.
A two-dimensional surface on which I can prepare, sort and arrange information along two axes without losing overview and manageability seems to me to be optimal, at least for knowledge work. (Of course, there are applications in which 3D environments and virtual reality and “spatial computing” can shine: anything that has to do with modulation, creative tasks in sculpting CGI meshes, or simulation applications — but none of these things seem to me to be the killer application needed to break the technology into the mainstream.)
Unless Apple manages to shrink their VR/AR device to at least ski goggle weight and size and complexity, I don’t see any real mass adoption of the technology. However, I could definitely imagine that in a few years after a few iterations a critical point will be reached, possibly due to competitive pressure from Meta’s cooperation with Ray Ban, from which XR (Mixed Reality) technology will no longer be a block in the face is that cuts off the user from the outside world. Hopefully that wouldn’t be the false suggestion of a boring infinity, but rather a meaningful enrichment of the real world, in which one or two killer apps could then appear.
Until then, a few Vision Pro v12-x-3000 iterations will come and go, with which we are more or less alone in watching Ted Lasso on the ceiling.