7 ms·

Today everyone is like "remember when we didn't spend all of our time looking at our smartphones?" 15 years from now everyone will say "remember when we didn't

Today everyone is like "remember when we didn't spend all of our time looking at our smartphones?" 15 years from now everyone will say "remember when we didn't have these computers literally strapped to our face all the time?" It is the obvious extension of existing trends in technology.

isthispermanent 4y ago
Maybe AR, but not VR.
- andybak 4y ago
  This is oft-repeated but it's not as simple as that. There's no sharp line dividing the two. You already have "VR + passthrough" which is pseudo-AR. And AR turns into VR as soon as you cover up enough of the real world. There's some experiences/applications that suit AR more than VR and vice-versa. Most devices will offer a mix of the two.
  - im3w1l 4y ago
    I think a ballpark to aim for is 95% reality, 5% overlay. Whether that's achieved using passthrough or not is a minor detail. Since the benefits will be pretty subtle QoL things, the form factor has to be very ergonomic to make it worth it, so widespread use could be decades away.
whitepaint 4y ago
HN crowd is, surprisingly, quite myopic about new technologies. Ethereum & VR headsets are great examples. Both of these are incredible and will definitely change the world in a very drastic way; yet, both are hated and ridiculed here.
- Kakashi4 4y ago
  Remember Google glass? Besides, I think new technologies are generally thought of conservatively by the majority and will only have a couple of supporters in the initial stages.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  > Both of these are incredible and will definitely change the world in a very drastic way; I'd easily take the other side of that bet. More fundamentally, though, I take issue that "the HN crowd is myopic about new technologies". I'll just speak for myself, but I was easily excited about smartphones, the potential of SaaS businesses, I remember taking my first Uber thinking "I'm glad I'm not a taxi driver", etc. etc. The fact that many on HN look at hucksterism and bullshit with a critical eye is something I think we should collectively be proud of.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Who on HN hates VR? That tech has been breathlessly praised here, at least years ago, but it’s just since fallen into the trough of disappointment for the time being. Eventually it’ll get to the plateau.
- tartoran 4y ago
  The gripe HN has with these technologies is the hype and speculation and it’s the responsible thing to do to point those out. You see yourself as a non myopic but if you look at it historically, technology always panned out differently and in unexpected ways. Why do you presume you’re going to not make the same mistakes?
- airstrike 4y ago
  I have no idea why you're bucketing these two examples as if they were similar in any way whatsoever
- smoldesu 4y ago
  > Ethereum & VR headsets (...) will definitely change the world in a very drastic way Wanna put money down on that?
  - amon22 4y ago
    They probably did...
- smackeyacky 4y ago
  With any luck, both will bankrupt the carpet baggers who are pushing this nonsense. That will change the world for the better.
- lkrubner 4y ago
  Both crypto and VR have been thoroughly debunked, many, many times, and yet people like you keep bringing them up as if you have not read any of the previous criticism. I'm not sure if there is anything that can be said to you that will help you see how deeply stupid these technologies are. Some of the critiques already posted to Hacker News have raised every valid point against these technologies. I can't think of anything more that can be said. At this point, we simply have to wait 20 years, and then you'll be able to see that these technologies never developed into anything much more than games.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
I don't buy it, and honestly I think hardly anyone else does either. I remember when I tried the first iPhone in 2007. Sure, it wasn't super fast, the screen was small and pixelated by today's standards, but I remember going "Holy shit, this is amazing." It was easy to see its utility on the first use of it. Contrast that with a VR headset. I think "This is a cool game to play for 20 mins or so", but I have absolutely no desire at all to spend any portion of my time in "the metaverse". This is fundamentally solving a problem that people don't have, and it's a solution they don't want. I have yet to see anyone (who isn't somehow paid to shill it) be genuinely excited about the potential of "the metaverse".
- weaksauce 4y ago
  Agreed. Time may prove us wrong but I don't see how it is in any way going to be the next big thing. the cell phone is something that most everyone had and needed already so there being a smartphone that can do more is an obvious next step forward and has tangible utility and doesn't require you to change anything fundamentally about yourself or your habits. requiring special and expensive basically single use kit to just get on the platform is a nonstarter for wide adoption. yeah people will use it and a subset will love it but it's not the next facebook or smartphone barring some giant leap in something that I can't imagine.
- sombremesa 4y ago
  > when I tried the first iPhone What about when you tried the first touchscreen smartphone, which was probably resistive and came with a stylus? Seems unfair to compare an emerging tech with the iPhone (which took an emerging tech to the next level) off the bat. It's almost an argument in bad faith.
  - inetknght 4y ago
    Not the person you're replying to but: tbqh I absolutely much prefer a stylus over my fat fingers.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    On the contrary, I remember trying my first VR headset in the 90s when it was "Max Headroom-esque", so it's a bit rich to demand that I only consider the earliest smartphones by comparison, when VR has been progressing for 30 years. And, to clarify, I think the current crop of VR headsets are quite cool. But again, I see them cool in small units of time. I also think many, many people have come to the realization that there is too much ever-present technology in their lives, and the last thing they want is to become the humans from Wall-E. When it comes to crypto, given how antiquated our current financial settlement systems are, I can see its utility as a backend settlement layer, but 95% of what I see peddled in the crypto space is just some other get-rich-quick scheme.
rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/
naravara 4y ago
There's a lot of 1960s SciFi where future people are planning out interstellar travel routes with slide-rules. Even "The Foundation" series posits that basically all cool technology in the future is going to be based on mastery of nuclear power. We do a bad job of extrapolating where the future will be from current trends. The frequent breakthroughs in physics and industrial, precision manufacturing of heavy machinery around the mid 20th century eventually slowed down. The remaining problems got too hard to make major leaps and bounds improvements on at the same pace, and the desire/value to keep pushing on it slowly faded. It' still there, but a computing revolution happened instead. There's no reason to think the future revolving around improvements in networked computing is going to go on forever, we just don't know what the next "thing" is going to be. I'd argue most of the benefits of having the internet readily available at all times in all places are basically already realized by smartphones and anything else is mostly just going to be a refinement or intensification of stuff we already know. It will not be transformational in the way smartphones were. It's on a similar arc where the leaps-and-bounds improvements are harder to come by and it's not clear what we'd do with them when they happen. Gone are the days when anyone would notice a performance improvement in their day-to-day computing tasks from having a cutting edge CPU or GPU. Advancements are increasingly only useful for more niche use cases that refine and improve what we already have rather than dramatically altering the way we work. Faster mobile data is cool, but it doesn't change the way you use your phone and neither will a more immersive computing interface markedly change how you do the tasks you use a networked computer to do. I don't know what the next field that undergoes such revolutionary change will be. If I were a betting man I'd put my money on major breakthroughs in biomechanics and life sciences, but who can say for sure?
giords 4y ago
True and agreeable, but I think more and more people are realizing and fighting this. It's a bit like with climate change. We're not going to like what we need to do to stop it, but we must do it.
Enginerrrd 4y ago
>It is the obvious extension of existing trends in technology. I'm not so sure, but perhaps... although there's some really big problems that need to get solved to get there, and some of them aren't technological problems. 1. The technology isn't there yet. To their credit, it might be getting close though. A not insignificant number of people still get sick from VR goggles. The resolutions just aren't at present sufficient. Available portable computing power might not be enough at present. IMO, the cartoonized VR environments we can currently produce on the fly aren't going to be of as much interest as more realistic environments and avatars. The spatial resolution of sensors and lack of tactile feedback aren't gonna cut it for even the most basic tasks. 2. People wearing VR goggles look dorky AF. In fact, they ARE dorky AF. I don't think Facebook's upper management fully appreciates this issue. Social stigma is a hell of a thing to try and fight. It's not impossible to do, but it will be way more challenging than I believe they think it is. 3. No one wants to wear a blindfold in public. VR goggles are basically that and worse. AR might be able to address that, but for whatever reasons, having a screen in your hand doesn't trigger the same vulnerability response people would have to VR goggles. (It should, because it steal our attention like nothing else, but it doesn't.) People don't feel comfortable if they can't read the social cues of people around them and see danger approaching. I think one of their strategies is the most promising: Turn AR/VR into a common workspace standard. Monitors are big, clunky, hard to move, inflexible, etc. If you could use VR to create a really clean functional workspace to replace the monitor, that might be a real winner and help drive up comfort and adoption issues. This is still a really hard domain to solve though. In video calls, we still have a lot of people who call in on their phone. This technology is compatible with lots of devices. One person wearing a VR isn't going to be compatible with everyone else though. If I'm meeting you, in general and especially for anything with higher stakes, I don't want to talk to a fucking cartoon, I want to see your face.
- disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  > I don't think Facebook's upper management fully appreciates this issue. Social stigma is a hell of a thing to try and fight Agreed, but they have form in this area. I remember when FB came out, and it was considered completely insane to use your real name on the Internet.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sjtindell 4y ago
It’s one of dozens and dozens of these technology paths branching out before us that seems somehow both obvious and not yet ready. Any day now we’ll have self driving cars, the metaverse, cryptocurrencies, robots doing chores…there are all these things that feel “obvious” and right here…yet so far away.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  3d printing, hoverboards, cold fusion and turning lead into gold.

isthispermanent 4y ago

Maybe AR, but not VR.

andybak 4y ago
This is oft-repeated but it's not as simple as that. There's no sharp line dividing the two. You already have "VR + passthrough" which is pseudo-AR. And AR turns into VR as soon as you cover up enough of the real world. There's some experiences/applications that suit AR more than VR and vice-versa. Most devices will offer a mix of the two.
- im3w1l 4y ago
  I think a ballpark to aim for is 95% reality, 5% overlay. Whether that's achieved using passthrough or not is a minor detail. Since the benefits will be pretty subtle QoL things, the form factor has to be very ergonomic to make it worth it, so widespread use could be decades away.

whitepaint 4y ago

HN crowd is, surprisingly, quite myopic about new technologies. Ethereum & VR headsets are great examples. Both of these are incredible and will definitely change the world in a very drastic way; yet, both are hated and ridiculed here.

Kakashi4 4y ago
Remember Google glass? Besides, I think new technologies are generally thought of conservatively by the majority and will only have a couple of supporters in the initial stages.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> Both of these are incredible and will definitely change the world in a very drastic way; I'd easily take the other side of that bet. More fundamentally, though, I take issue that "the HN crowd is myopic about new technologies". I'll just speak for myself, but I was easily excited about smartphones, the potential of SaaS businesses, I remember taking my first Uber thinking "I'm glad I'm not a taxi driver", etc. etc. The fact that many on HN look at hucksterism and bullshit with a critical eye is something I think we should collectively be proud of.
Apocryphon 4y ago
Who on HN hates VR? That tech has been breathlessly praised here, at least years ago, but it’s just since fallen into the trough of disappointment for the time being. Eventually it’ll get to the plateau.
tartoran 4y ago
The gripe HN has with these technologies is the hype and speculation and it’s the responsible thing to do to point those out. You see yourself as a non myopic but if you look at it historically, technology always panned out differently and in unexpected ways. Why do you presume you’re going to not make the same mistakes?
airstrike 4y ago
I have no idea why you're bucketing these two examples as if they were similar in any way whatsoever
smoldesu 4y ago
> Ethereum & VR headsets (...) will definitely change the world in a very drastic way Wanna put money down on that?
- amon22 4y ago
  They probably did...
smackeyacky 4y ago
With any luck, both will bankrupt the carpet baggers who are pushing this nonsense. That will change the world for the better.
lkrubner 4y ago
Both crypto and VR have been thoroughly debunked, many, many times, and yet people like you keep bringing them up as if you have not read any of the previous criticism. I'm not sure if there is anything that can be said to you that will help you see how deeply stupid these technologies are. Some of the critiques already posted to Hacker News have raised every valid point against these technologies. I can't think of anything more that can be said. At this point, we simply have to wait 20 years, and then you'll be able to see that these technologies never developed into anything much more than games.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

I don't buy it, and honestly I think hardly anyone else does either. I remember when I tried the first iPhone in 2007. Sure, it wasn't super fast, the screen was small and pixelated by today's standards, but I remember going "Holy shit, this is amazing." It was easy to see its utility on the first use of it. Contrast that with a VR headset. I think "This is a cool game to play for 20 mins or so", but I have absolutely no desire at all to spend any portion of my time in "the metaverse". This is fundamentally solving a problem that people don't have, and it's a solution they don't want. I have yet to see anyone (who isn't somehow paid to shill it) be genuinely excited about the potential of "the metaverse".

weaksauce 4y ago
Agreed. Time may prove us wrong but I don't see how it is in any way going to be the next big thing. the cell phone is something that most everyone had and needed already so there being a smartphone that can do more is an obvious next step forward and has tangible utility and doesn't require you to change anything fundamentally about yourself or your habits. requiring special and expensive basically single use kit to just get on the platform is a nonstarter for wide adoption. yeah people will use it and a subset will love it but it's not the next facebook or smartphone barring some giant leap in something that I can't imagine.
sombremesa 4y ago
> when I tried the first iPhone What about when you tried the first touchscreen smartphone, which was probably resistive and came with a stylus? Seems unfair to compare an emerging tech with the iPhone (which took an emerging tech to the next level) off the bat. It's almost an argument in bad faith.
- inetknght 4y ago
  Not the person you're replying to but: tbqh I absolutely much prefer a stylus over my fat fingers.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  On the contrary, I remember trying my first VR headset in the 90s when it was "Max Headroom-esque", so it's a bit rich to demand that I only consider the earliest smartphones by comparison, when VR has been progressing for 30 years. And, to clarify, I think the current crop of VR headsets are quite cool. But again, I see them cool in small units of time. I also think many, many people have come to the realization that there is too much ever-present technology in their lives, and the last thing they want is to become the humans from Wall-E. When it comes to crypto, given how antiquated our current financial settlement systems are, I can see its utility as a backend settlement layer, but 95% of what I see peddled in the crypto space is just some other get-rich-quick scheme.

rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago

https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/

naravara 4y ago

There's a lot of 1960s SciFi where future people are planning out interstellar travel routes with slide-rules. Even "The Foundation" series posits that basically all cool technology in the future is going to be based on mastery of nuclear power. We do a bad job of extrapolating where the future will be from current trends. The frequent breakthroughs in physics and industrial, precision manufacturing of heavy machinery around the mid 20th century eventually slowed down. The remaining problems got too hard to make major leaps and bounds improvements on at the same pace, and the desire/value to keep pushing on it slowly faded. It' still there, but a computing revolution happened instead. There's no reason to think the future revolving around improvements in networked computing is going to go on forever, we just don't know what the next "thing" is going to be. I'd argue most of the benefits of having the internet readily available at all times in all places are basically already realized by smartphones and anything else is mostly just going to be a refinement or intensification of stuff we already know. It will not be transformational in the way smartphones were. It's on a similar arc where the leaps-and-bounds improvements are harder to come by and it's not clear what we'd do with them when they happen. Gone are the days when anyone would notice a performance improvement in their day-to-day computing tasks from having a cutting edge CPU or GPU. Advancements are increasingly only useful for more niche use cases that refine and improve what we already have rather than dramatically altering the way we work. Faster mobile data is cool, but it doesn't change the way you use your phone and neither will a more immersive computing interface markedly change how you do the tasks you use a networked computer to do. I don't know what the next field that undergoes such revolutionary change will be. If I were a betting man I'd put my money on major breakthroughs in biomechanics and life sciences, but who can say for sure?

giords 4y ago

True and agreeable, but I think more and more people are realizing and fighting this. It's a bit like with climate change. We're not going to like what we need to do to stop it, but we must do it.

Enginerrrd 4y ago

>It is the obvious extension of existing trends in technology. I'm not so sure, but perhaps... although there's some really big problems that need to get solved to get there, and some of them aren't technological problems. 1. The technology isn't there yet. To their credit, it might be getting close though. A not insignificant number of people still get sick from VR goggles. The resolutions just aren't at present sufficient. Available portable computing power might not be enough at present. IMO, the cartoonized VR environments we can currently produce on the fly aren't going to be of as much interest as more realistic environments and avatars. The spatial resolution of sensors and lack of tactile feedback aren't gonna cut it for even the most basic tasks. 2. People wearing VR goggles look dorky AF. In fact, they ARE dorky AF. I don't think Facebook's upper management fully appreciates this issue. Social stigma is a hell of a thing to try and fight. It's not impossible to do, but it will be way more challenging than I believe they think it is. 3. No one wants to wear a blindfold in public. VR goggles are basically that and worse. AR might be able to address that, but for whatever reasons, having a screen in your hand doesn't trigger the same vulnerability response people would have to VR goggles. (It should, because it steal our attention like nothing else, but it doesn't.) People don't feel comfortable if they can't read the social cues of people around them and see danger approaching. I think one of their strategies is the most promising: Turn AR/VR into a common workspace standard. Monitors are big, clunky, hard to move, inflexible, etc. If you could use VR to create a really clean functional workspace to replace the monitor, that might be a real winner and help drive up comfort and adoption issues. This is still a really hard domain to solve though. In video calls, we still have a lot of people who call in on their phone. This technology is compatible with lots of devices. One person wearing a VR isn't going to be compatible with everyone else though. If I'm meeting you, in general and especially for anything with higher stakes, I don't want to talk to a fucking cartoon, I want to see your face.

disgruntledphd2 4y ago
> I don't think Facebook's upper management fully appreciates this issue. Social stigma is a hell of a thing to try and fight Agreed, but they have form in this area. I remember when FB came out, and it was considered completely insane to use your real name on the Internet.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sjtindell 4y ago

It’s one of dozens and dozens of these technology paths branching out before us that seems somehow both obvious and not yet ready. Any day now we’ll have self driving cars, the metaverse, cryptocurrencies, robots doing chores…there are all these things that feel “obvious” and right here…yet so far away.

ipaddr 4y ago
3d printing, hoverboards, cold fusion and turning lead into gold.