Judging by the (upper)middle class kids I work with, the social stigma around wearing earbuds while holding a conversation is clearly on the way out. It seems l

Judging by the (upper)middle class kids I work with, the social stigma around wearing earbuds while holding a conversation is clearly on the way out. It seems like a rapid social shift (which makes me old at 34, I guess) and is probably an “important” change for those who want to sell us on the AR future. To that end, my experience of using transparency mode on AirPod Pro earbuds is that they very much do “become invisible” while allowing me to overlay (auditory) information on the world around me. If they were built to be as inconspicuous as my father’s hearing aids, nobody would know the difference and no overt social stigma would persist. The AR future of today is auditory.