I’m a relatively early adopter of technology. For example, I purchased the world’s first portable video recorder, the Sony Portapak, and the world’s first portable computer, the Osborne. I used both extensively. I wrote my doctoral thesis on the Osborne and printed it via a daisy wheel. I purchased an Apple Newton upon release in 1993.
The Portapak and the Osborne weighed well over 20 lbs, and were an incredible pain to lug around! The Newton promised to recognize one’s handwriting immediately! Turned out that “immediately” meant sometime around 2020.
Mercifully, all three innovations, while radical upon release swiftly became obsolete because of greatly improved innovations. Thank God for the iPhone!
They were all expensive, but I had to have them. They struck me as Anthropocean necessities.
I’m feeling the same way about the Vision Pro.
I’ve gone through the demo twice. I experienced it as quite revelatory. I can’t tell you whether I think it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it is, for sure, a future thing!
I’ve been fascinated by 3D since my grandmother took me to Cinerama in 1955!
Like the Portapak, the Osborne, and the Newton, Vision Pro is clunky and very expensive. But, it’s a step toward living inside a hologram. Pornography will have a field day with this technology and its descendants.
Vision Pro, as a product, has a variety of commercial market problems. It may end up being as rarely used as television was when it was invented and used by John Baird, Philo T. Farnsworth, and Vladamir Zworykin about 100 years ago. But, like TV, spatial computing will be a “killer app gadget” at some point, and garden-variety Anthropoceans like me won’t be able to wait too much longer to use it!
