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Most technological breakthroughs are first perceived as toys and hobbies of the rich: personal computers, cellphones, mechanical carriages, Facebook. In this co

Most technological breakthroughs are first perceived as toys and hobbies of the rich: personal computers, cellphones, mechanical carriages, Facebook. In this context, sour-grape reactionism is unfortunate but not surprising. VR is where computation becomes human. No keyboards, no monitors, no mice or joysticks, but instead hands, gaze, movement, and voice. VR presents itself as a new way to receive information, but its essential innovation is data input in its most natural form. Enabling humanity to engage with itself and its machines with a fully embodied interface is a 10x improvement over touch-screens. Small example: whiteboards. The simple act of a talented group viewing and marking a large flat surface can change the world. Today, this is not possible without co-location. Once a VR headset with positional and hand tracking hits the market (Oculus promises this spring), the rate of world-changing collaboration will no longer be restricted to geography. Once these virtual whiteboard trend toward Jupyter notebooks, VR will not only have triumphed over location-restricted bodies, but also location-restricted computers. The future is bright and VR will be at the heart of it, regardless of how many people currently mistake it for a toy.

wybiral 8y ago
> Most technological breakthroughs are first perceived as toys and hobbies of the rich: personal computers, cellphones, mechanical carriages, Facebook. In this context, sour-grape reactionism is unfortunate but not surprising. But not every technology ends up being the next personal computer, cellphone, or Facebook. Someone probably once thought that hosting sites like GeoCities were the future before blogs/Facebook made it clear that the average user doesn't want to design their own website. It took something more approachable to come along.
- cannonedhamster 8y ago
  VR vastly overestimates the amount of space people have in their living rooms. Unless we're designing houses with rooms just for VR, I don't ever see it taking off. Maybe as a destination like a holodeck?
killjoywashere 8y ago
VR sounds great. Where it falls apart, IMHO, is biology. Tech is a world of plastic, glass, and metal. Eukaryotes just don't get along with those things in close contact for very long. Dermatitides are a thing.
- jodrellblank 8y ago
  People can wear clothes, shoes, glasses and jewellery 16 hours/day for decades, can work with thin food-protective or thick hand-protective gloves on for hours every day. Even when people suffer from chapped or sore skin problems with gloves, as some do, they still manage to do it because the value of (being employed, or being able to work with delicate or dangerous things) makes it worth enduring. I don't know anything about VR and the biological costs of using it, but why is it necessarily more harsh on the body than glasses and headphones and gloves? Future-VR is likely to get smaller and lighter, like current VR is smaller and lighter than Steve Mann's 1980s and 1990s wearables. Won't there come a point where it's just .. light and easy and mostly fine?
  - killjoywashere 8y ago
    Sebaceous glands and sinuses are going to be problems for as long as humans vaguely resemble other apes. Those are the sorts of problems you're up against, combined with the basic optics problems. Don't you think that if there was an easier way to put the required visual field in front of the eye closer, with a lighter lens, that wouldn't have been already done? There's some basic optics problems that fix the solution space in ways that are not great the particular sack of meat that biology produced.
new299 8y ago
> The simple act of a talented group viewing and marking a large flat surface can change the world. Is this really such a common way to work and collaborate? I’ve rarely seen this even in co-locates teams. More usually problems are such that people work offline, put and document/proof-of-concept, presentation together and then maybe discuss the presentation/document verbally, or over email. Not so much movie style enthusiastic whiteboarding. Maybe that would be better way of working, but is it really that common? Is there any data on this?
- king_magic 8y ago
  > Is this really such a common way to work and collaborate? Same observation: it absolutely isn’t how people work & collaborate. VR is DOA for most kinds of work because it just isn’t all that compatible with most kinds of work.
king_magic 8y ago
> The simple act of a talented group viewing and marking a large flat surface can change the world. Yeah, sorry, but that’s just not how most real work gets done in the real world. Make Excel a compelling VR app, then we’ll talk.
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
> The simple act of a talented group viewing and marking a large flat surface can change the world. Yes, chalkboards, I’ve heard of them and used them.
dlkf 8y ago
> VR is where computation becomes human. No keyboards, no monitors, no mice or joysticks, but instead hands, gaze, movement, and voice. The VR optimists underestimate how deeply human it is to manipulate a tool with your hands. It's not a coincidence that the only intelligent mammal is also the only one with opposable thumbs. If voice was actually vastly preferable to the output of a keyboard, it wouldn't be the case that texting is more popular than calls (and that voicemail has more or less gone the way of the betamax). > The simple act of a talented group viewing and marking a large flat surface can change the world. Today, this is not possible without co-location. Are you being sarcastic? I do this every day in Google docs.
- karthikvellanki 8y ago
  Texting being more common than calls is a pretty bad example. Texting is more popular because it allows asynchronous communication. Calls require both participants to be connected at the same time, which is a big hassle.
  - dlkf 8y ago
    That's fair - comparing calls to texts is not apples to apples. But I think the issue is deeper than live vs async: voicemail is fully asynchronous, and it is by far the least popular of the three. I don't think your objection diminishes my main argument, which is that many forms of communication don't receive any optimization from VR - including forms that the VR crowd seems to believe will be revolutionized (e.g. wildermuthn's whiteboard example).
    - reactor 8y ago
      I think part of it's due to the perceived privacy i.e you can 'text' at anytime without bringing any attention from surroundings, but that's not possible with 'calls' when you are in the office or when surrounded with friends/parents/relatives etc.
- julius_set 8y ago
  Err flaws in your argument but orangutans also have opposable things..
dagw 8y ago
Once these virtual whiteboard trend toward Jupyter notebooks, VR will not only have triumphed over location-restricted bodies, but also location-restricted computers. Why will VR be a better solution for this than AR? Surely being able to see your real surroundings with virtual whiteboards and controls 'stuck' to various surfaces will be more comfortable for people than a totally immersive world.

wybiral 8y ago

> Most technological breakthroughs are first perceived as toys and hobbies of the rich: personal computers, cellphones, mechanical carriages, Facebook. In this context, sour-grape reactionism is unfortunate but not surprising. But not every technology ends up being the next personal computer, cellphone, or Facebook. Someone probably once thought that hosting sites like GeoCities were the future before blogs/Facebook made it clear that the average user doesn't want to design their own website. It took something more approachable to come along.

cannonedhamster 8y ago
VR vastly overestimates the amount of space people have in their living rooms. Unless we're designing houses with rooms just for VR, I don't ever see it taking off. Maybe as a destination like a holodeck?

killjoywashere 8y ago

VR sounds great. Where it falls apart, IMHO, is biology. Tech is a world of plastic, glass, and metal. Eukaryotes just don't get along with those things in close contact for very long. Dermatitides are a thing.

jodrellblank 8y ago
People can wear clothes, shoes, glasses and jewellery 16 hours/day for decades, can work with thin food-protective or thick hand-protective gloves on for hours every day. Even when people suffer from chapped or sore skin problems with gloves, as some do, they still manage to do it because the value of (being employed, or being able to work with delicate or dangerous things) makes it worth enduring. I don't know anything about VR and the biological costs of using it, but why is it necessarily more harsh on the body than glasses and headphones and gloves? Future-VR is likely to get smaller and lighter, like current VR is smaller and lighter than Steve Mann's 1980s and 1990s wearables. Won't there come a point where it's just .. light and easy and mostly fine?
- killjoywashere 8y ago
  Sebaceous glands and sinuses are going to be problems for as long as humans vaguely resemble other apes. Those are the sorts of problems you're up against, combined with the basic optics problems. Don't you think that if there was an easier way to put the required visual field in front of the eye closer, with a lighter lens, that wouldn't have been already done? There's some basic optics problems that fix the solution space in ways that are not great the particular sack of meat that biology produced.

new299 8y ago

> The simple act of a talented group viewing and marking a large flat surface can change the world. Is this really such a common way to work and collaborate? I’ve rarely seen this even in co-locates teams. More usually problems are such that people work offline, put and document/proof-of-concept, presentation together and then maybe discuss the presentation/document verbally, or over email. Not so much movie style enthusiastic whiteboarding. Maybe that would be better way of working, but is it really that common? Is there any data on this?

king_magic 8y ago
> Is this really such a common way to work and collaborate? Same observation: it absolutely isn’t how people work & collaborate. VR is DOA for most kinds of work because it just isn’t all that compatible with most kinds of work.

king_magic 8y ago

> The simple act of a talented group viewing and marking a large flat surface can change the world. Yeah, sorry, but that’s just not how most real work gets done in the real world. Make Excel a compelling VR app, then we’ll talk.

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

> The simple act of a talented group viewing and marking a large flat surface can change the world. Yes, chalkboards, I’ve heard of them and used them.

dlkf 8y ago

> VR is where computation becomes human. No keyboards, no monitors, no mice or joysticks, but instead hands, gaze, movement, and voice. The VR optimists underestimate how deeply human it is to manipulate a tool with your hands. It's not a coincidence that the only intelligent mammal is also the only one with opposable thumbs. If voice was actually vastly preferable to the output of a keyboard, it wouldn't be the case that texting is more popular than calls (and that voicemail has more or less gone the way of the betamax). > The simple act of a talented group viewing and marking a large flat surface can change the world. Today, this is not possible without co-location. Are you being sarcastic? I do this every day in Google docs.

karthikvellanki 8y ago
Texting being more common than calls is a pretty bad example. Texting is more popular because it allows asynchronous communication. Calls require both participants to be connected at the same time, which is a big hassle.
- dlkf 8y ago
  That's fair - comparing calls to texts is not apples to apples. But I think the issue is deeper than live vs async: voicemail is fully asynchronous, and it is by far the least popular of the three. I don't think your objection diminishes my main argument, which is that many forms of communication don't receive any optimization from VR - including forms that the VR crowd seems to believe will be revolutionized (e.g. wildermuthn's whiteboard example).
  - reactor 8y ago
    I think part of it's due to the perceived privacy i.e you can 'text' at anytime without bringing any attention from surroundings, but that's not possible with 'calls' when you are in the office or when surrounded with friends/parents/relatives etc.
julius_set 8y ago
Err flaws in your argument but orangutans also have opposable things..

dagw 8y ago

Once these virtual whiteboard trend toward Jupyter notebooks, VR will not only have triumphed over location-restricted bodies, but also location-restricted computers. Why will VR be a better solution for this than AR? Surely being able to see your real surroundings with virtual whiteboards and controls 'stuck' to various surfaces will be more comfortable for people than a totally immersive world.