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I think what's funny about these videos is they aren't exactly dependent on advances in computing, but in display technology and network bandwidth. I've been an

I think what's funny about these videos is they aren't exactly dependent on advances in computing, but in display technology and network bandwidth. I've been annoying people for years by pointing out software is often the easiest part of all of this, and anyone doubting that should attempt to build a physical device, let alone a state of the art one. Really the canary in this particular coal mine was when Silicon Graphics hit the wall in the late 90s. They were the epitome of pushing this dream that with visual computing everyone will be able to leverage their own intelligence that much more, leading to a better world, and it just doesn't seem to happen - we all just use it to distract each other instead. In the world today you have SGI level graphics in everything, and yet the applications of it are so mundane. For example, you don't see people doing finance visualizations in immersive 3D, we don't see people using VR for Minority Report style interfaces even though they are now viable, and even the Mac Finder is no longer spatial. Ultimately I think our culture has lost hope in the whole idea of visual intelligence.

kd913 3y ago
May be true, but that coffee table is still something I want. Given it existed 16 years ago why did the concept just get culled? We are now just left with boring coffee tables, photo sharing, music selection, movie picking, event planning, all stuck in the same model for the last 15 years. Where are my smart glasses and HUDs? We all have gone back to being excited over talking with a chatbot via text. Personally I would rather have some mates over having fun with the above table.
- fomine3 3y ago
  Glass HUD is in progress by Apple, Meta, and ventures. Improving hardware is hard.
- mncharity 3y ago
  > why US industrial policy (IP;) is optimized for pharma-shaped industry, so that's what you get? Apple is investing years of nifty R&D to create an extremely difficult mass consumer market HUD, and far easier "niche" markets will be addressed afterwards, not before. Because patents. Maybe sufficiently long-term that's a win. Maybe not. Absent mandatory FRAND licensing, patents don't play well with many-player small-market exploratory industrialization/commercialization. Pre-boom VR and large touch surfaces used the DIY dodge, "we're selling a kit, not a thing, so violations are on you, and of course you can't sell what you build". So you might then have bought a kit for a crufty coffee table surface, and adapted code from a we-cant-be-commercial small and scattered but active FOSS ecosystem. It all rather crimps market gestation. My understanding is the current trade war kicked off because pharma insisted on a "everything pharma wants, now" US position, and China considered that an intolerable new 'unequal treaty' (opium wars context). Importation barriers don't help. And people trading incremental collective progress for moats and unicorn dreams. And just small-population "why was X never done?". As you accumulate market inefficiencies, eventually it all just doesn't fly? But mostly patents it seems to me.

kd913 3y ago

May be true, but that coffee table is still something I want. Given it existed 16 years ago why did the concept just get culled? We are now just left with boring coffee tables, photo sharing, music selection, movie picking, event planning, all stuck in the same model for the last 15 years. Where are my smart glasses and HUDs? We all have gone back to being excited over talking with a chatbot via text. Personally I would rather have some mates over having fun with the above table.

fomine3 3y ago
Glass HUD is in progress by Apple, Meta, and ventures. Improving hardware is hard.
mncharity 3y ago
> why US industrial policy (IP;) is optimized for pharma-shaped industry, so that's what you get? Apple is investing years of nifty R&D to create an extremely difficult mass consumer market HUD, and far easier "niche" markets will be addressed afterwards, not before. Because patents. Maybe sufficiently long-term that's a win. Maybe not. Absent mandatory FRAND licensing, patents don't play well with many-player small-market exploratory industrialization/commercialization. Pre-boom VR and large touch surfaces used the DIY dodge, "we're selling a kit, not a thing, so violations are on you, and of course you can't sell what you build". So you might then have bought a kit for a crufty coffee table surface, and adapted code from a we-cant-be-commercial small and scattered but active FOSS ecosystem. It all rather crimps market gestation. My understanding is the current trade war kicked off because pharma insisted on a "everything pharma wants, now" US position, and China considered that an intolerable new 'unequal treaty' (opium wars context). Importation barriers don't help. And people trading incremental collective progress for moats and unicorn dreams. And just small-population "why was X never done?". As you accumulate market inefficiencies, eventually it all just doesn't fly? But mostly patents it seems to me.