It’s the technicians of Silicon Valley, backed by billions in digital-age ambition,...
“There’s one genuinely powerful force seeking a more podlike, nutshell-bounded human future,” writes The New York Times columnists Ross Douthat. “It’s the technicians of Silicon Valley, backed by billions in digital-age ambition, who’ll seemingly stop at nothing until human beings live inside their goggles.” — FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY WITH NYT STORY DOUTHAT COLUMN BY ROSS DOUTHAT FOR JUNE 9, 2023. ALL OTHER USE PROHIBITED.“I will not live in the pod,” runs a mantra on right-wing Twitter.
The latest example of this ambition is the Apple Vision Pro, launched with much fanfare and sleek and creepy advertising this week, which promises an immersive visual experience inside a $3,499 headset. It’s in direct competition with Facebook turned Meta’s long-running attempts to make its headset-mediated metaverse happen.
Obviously, Apple, Meta and Google are all invested in the second future. The big money in Silicon Valley comes from controlling crucial platforms and getting other companies to pay for the privilege of having their programs or apps allowed inside, and if enough people migrate to the metaverse, then the winner of the headset wars will be the king of infinite money as well as infinite virtual space.
Of course, you can construct a case where actually the more immersive world of headset life will be healthier than the half-real world of screens and swipes and posting. Or you can take a Singularitarian stance and argue that all future human progress will take place in virtual universes, so let’s start the leap right now. The digital revolution hasn’t failed to deliver the promised utopia, you can say; the revolution just hasn’t been completed.
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