7 ms·

Vision 1993

107 points by zdw 3y ago

staplers 3y ago
I've been having a similar thought. The future isn't lugging your computer around on your face. Desktops will stay desktops, just like a workbench. It's about computing the physical world.
- noduerme 3y ago
  When I went "remote" in the late 90s/early 2000s, pulling out your laptop at a coffeeshop in America (remember those? the ones that weren't chains?) wasn't even common enough to be considered antisocial or an abuse of the space yet. Doing so at a bar at 3pm in a third world country was exotic enough to get you kidnapped. Since then, society went through a phase where it was almost like a showy thing that people could be working away from the office, to the point where everyone started doing it, and then eventually to where if you want to work on a laptop, you self-segregate with everyone else into a starbucks or whatever, and make sure to keep buying coffee or limit your time. We're, in other words, way past the point in human history where walking around with tech on your person is cool because you can do productive things on it, or even cool because you have something new, or cool because the tech itself is cool. It is actually impossible for Apple or anyone else to recapture that now, because everyone now knows that everyone with one of these things is just watching cat videos and looking stupid. Apple seems to be chasing the tech-as-jewelry market with larger and larger ticket items and diminishing returns. Because tech was never jewelry and or status symbol to the people who use it to be productive... and the only card you could ever play in a bar with a laptop, even 25 years ago, was that you were being productive. Not entertaining yourself. I would've been ashamed to sit there and watch cat videos and tune out the world while other people were talking, but I could show them what I was building and get into conversations. This tech violates that norm which Apple assumes is dead - that of not sitting in a social space and walling yourself off from it in a fundamentally antisocial way.
  - tlb 3y ago
    For coffee shop computing, I’d like a computer than is clearly only for programming/creative work. When you saw Hemingway with a typewriter in a cafe, or Feynman with pages of squiggles in a bar, it was obvious at a glance they were creating. And 30 years ago, a programmer could also look like that, but laptops have been ruined by entertainment.
    - noduerme 3y ago
      My kind of mid-2010s hack to that end was to use an app that put my whole screen into red monochrome on a black background. It didn't abuse my eyes and, since the whole screen was usually filled with tiny code, people assumed I was doing something important. But more importantly, I think, I came from an epoch where if you're going to take your work out with you, you'd better be prepared to be interrupted and be gregarious and conversational with people. No headphones, no cold shoulder. People ask what you're doing and you take a 30 minute break and show them. Maybe make plans to get drinks after work. I used to meet other coders that way - it was actually how I met most of the really solid people I worked with over the years. Otherwise why would you be out?
ndjshe3838 3y ago
After watching a bunch of reviews I feel like the eyes on the outside is the “Touch Bar” of the AVP. Something that sounds cool in theory but Apple will eventually drop in future models as it just adds extra complexity/cost for little benefit.
- prawn 3y ago
  That's a good comparison. It strikes me as a visual differentiator as much as anything, which is a shallow purpose. I'd initially assumed that they'd have some grander plans for it, but I assume the lenticular aspect implies that it's not going to be used for any sort of display that isn't inset an inch or two? e.g., it can't show a ghostly reverse view of what someone is seeing, or a visible HUD, or a digital effect (imagine a security guard wearing this, and the display is showing a "scanning, scanning" effect - cool, not useful...). And another confounding thing is that it might've been a pro feature you introduced after a base model, but if the eventual non-pro edition has a plastic front without Eyesight, and it's cheaper and lighter, most people will be happy about that. Ultimately, I think they just decided that it was worth the trade-offs to instantly have a headset that looked different and more futuristic than each competitor. They had to make a splash.
  - astrange 3y ago
    It is used for some effects - it flashes when you take a photo, and it guides you through face scanning in initial setup.
    - dharmab 3y ago
      The flash could be a white LED. Apple has some other devices which require another device for setup, so it wouldn't be unusual for them. They could also offer setup at an Apple store.
      - astrange 3y ago
        > Apple has some other devices which require another device for setup, so it wouldn't be unusual for them. Hmm, I think that'd be pretty difficult because you can't guarantee the camera on another phone is good enough, unless you require everyone to have a phone from the last 1-2 years.
SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
At the time of writing of this comment this story is number one on hacker news front page. While it’s an interesting read, it’s hard for me to want to view it as an interesting take because there is no indication that the writer has ever actually tried the hardware being discussed.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  I don't see how that is particularly relevant really. Reviews of the hardware being discussed are abundant. The point of this article is to share this look back - a book review, taking what we thought of AR in the past and relating it to the present. I had never heard of this book before. That's what I got out of this. MKBHD, Casey Neistat, and all the others have done a fine job of covering the present already.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
    I think it’s relevant specifically because the book itself and the points in the article are talking about physical reactions and responses to the hardware. If it was conceptually more about other things that weren’t directly related to the physical aspect of the interface I would agree with your take. Especially because the article ends with what could be constituted as a somewhat sweeping generalization that directly speaks to the physical interface aspect of the device. This isn’t like reviewing Christopher Nolan’s new psychological thriller in that you can get the basic gist of it from the SparkNotes and say something pithy about society. You need to actually try it to form an opinion when you are talking about how far or not it has come in meeting some science fiction fantasy
    - buffington 3y ago
      It's totally reasonable that one can observe the many videos of the AVP in use and in many real world situations with plenty of evidence of "physical reactions and responses to the hardware," and draw their own conclusions about how those compare with the book they read without owning the damn thing.
- 3y ago
Mistletoe 3y ago
Sometimes our sci-fi dreams are just that and don't make sense or aren't possible in the real world. Like flying cars, teleportation, faster than light travel, the year of the Linux desktop. I think VR is always going to be like that. It's good for some niche applications, but it just doesn't fit the form factor of humans like a monitor and keyboard or controller does. Our headsets are good enough now that we can't keep saying "well if it just had more X" where X is resolution or whatever moving goalpost they want to put out there. We just don't like crap on our face.
- ta8645 3y ago
  > We just don't like crap on our face. A lot of people wear glasses without much objection. AR glasses need to be about the same form factor as regular sunglasses today.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    And then what? We just get a different way to interact with screens? Phones and tablets can leverage their size to pack bright displays, tactile controls and large batteries. Targeting the Ray-ban form factor is going to require some ugly sacrifices, and even an optimal solution is going to be a hard sell compared to the miniaturized technology of it's day. I keep hearing the "make AR glasses" shtick, but I don't think there will be real demand for it. You either wear the heavy, light-blocking fighter-pilot headset for full immersion, or you get the dinky 15 degree FOV washed-out Google Glass. And both of them cost a mortgage compared to the smartphone.
    - ta8645 3y ago
      Time will tell, most of your objections are temporary and don't represent any fundamental limit to the technological possibilities, only the current reality. Personally, if nothing else, I would gladly trade a bulky phone for something less intrusive.
      - smoldesu 3y ago
aaron695 3y ago
> I want to be in a park at night and see fiery snakes climbing all the trees. Why the fuck do you want that? Corporate graffiti on nature? I don't mind fairy lights on a tree in some situations. I like tree houses. I like a tree swing. Sometimes real graffiti. Because someone built something, it has value. Some random AI shoves random snakes on trees? Why not sit at home and watch TV on your couch if you don't like trees. An AR reality everyone shares at once with snakes in trees. Like a concert or a light show by an artist. Yep, but it will cost $ to visit. And it'll cost millions to create. > I want to walk into a big-box store and have a huge glowing balloon appear over the Baking Supplies. Who's going to record the data for you? People have tried to map stores for years and it'd work fine with AirPods telling you where to go, or a map on your phone. > I want floating labels to attach to all the different parts of the machine I’m trying to fix. Ikea struggles to make useful paper instructions. Brickit looks interesting, if it was done for mosaics and art like that - https://brickit.app/ https://brickit.app/ > AVP is VR not AR AVP is AR, a strange comment. If you look at the only working commercial AR, it's doctors using it to have a screen next to where they do surgery so they don't have to look away. AVP having a big display anywhere might be it's best hope.
- pests 3y ago
  > People have tried to map stores for years Google does a good job. I can zoom right into my local Meijer with Maps and into individual sections. > AVP is AR, a strange comment. How so? You are not looking at reality. In fact, reality is blocked. You are looking at screens.
  - Someone 3y ago
    I think it’s more likely Meijer did a good job. AFAIK, both Google and Apple (mostly) rely on third parties to give them indoor map data. https://maps.google.com/help/maps/indoormaps/faqs.html https://maps.google.com/help/maps/indoormaps/faqs.html: “What does it mean to be a partner with indoor Google Maps? Google Maps Indoor partners can include their floor plans and labeled layouts of their venues in Google Maps for desktop and mobile. Visitors can see indoor maps on their mobile devices to conveniently find points of interest in supported venues.” https://register.apple.com/indoor https://register.apple.com/indoor: “Easily create detailed maps of your indoor spaces and let visitors see where they are right in your app. Organizations with large public and private spaces like airports, shopping centers, arenas, hospitals, universities, and private office buildings can register for the Indoor Maps Program. Indoor maps are built using industry standard tools and require only your existing Wi-Fi network to enable GPS-level location accuracy so visitors can navigate your spaces with ease.”
seydor 3y ago
Weren't the google glasses better for that?
JoachimS 3y ago
Good article, about Gibsons great book. But I got a bit stuck on the start of the article. It states: "I’ve plowed through the first wave of AVP (Apple Vision Pro) reviews, and it seems pretty obvious that, at the current price and form factor, it’s not gonna be a best-seller." I'm not sure what constitutes a best-seller. But according to several news stories (which may all be based on the same anonymous rumor), Apple has sold 200.000 Apple Vision Pro headsets: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/01/29/apple-vision-pro-headset-sales/ https://www.macrumors.com/2024/01/29/apple-vision-pro-headse... Does anybody know how many headsets the other VR vendors have sold?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- keypusher 3y ago
  Oculus has sold 20m+ million headsets. But it’s a very different headset, gaming focused. https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-sales-20-million-retention-struggles/amp/ https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-sales-20-million-retention-st...
  - sxp 3y ago
    That was 20m of their 7th-9th headsets (after DK1, DK2, Rift, Rift S, GearVR, Go). Other than the Quest 2, I don't think any VR headset has sold at the rate the AVP is currently selling at.
- grumbel 3y ago
  Oculus DK1 sold 56,334 Oculus DK2 sold 118,930 Rift and Vive together ~1 million PSVR1 ~6 million Quest123 20+ million
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
chaostheory 3y ago
For a guy who used a typewriter for his stories, William Gibson is a pretty visionary guy.
- enos_feedler 3y ago
  the future of typewriting was already there, it just wasn't evenly distributed.
rob74 3y ago
> Watching TV, by yourself, on a huge screen, is not the future. Augmenting reality is. I guess the main reason why this novel (and the trilogy that it's part of) is centered on AR is that Gibson had already done the completely immersive "hyper-VR" thing in Neuromancer (and the trilogy it was part of), so he probably wanted to explore something new...
j13n 3y ago
The current trend of projecting information onto our eyes through devices is a primitive form of sensory enhancement. It is time to make a leap towards a more transformative innovation, which could be achieved by transmitting knowledge directly into our brains. This way, we could simply know the name of a plant by looking at it. Reading is primarily about acquiring knowledge. I am personally excited about the idea of augmented intelligence, which would not require strapping a couple of TVs to our faces.
- birracerveza 3y ago
  See, the nice thing of AR glasses is that you can use them without tampering with the brain, and you can also take them off.
euroderf 3y ago
When there's a working, wearable, hoomin-friendly A/R available, I want a dial on the top to permit more or fewer annotations, kind of like the dial (slider?) on the AVP that fades reality in & out. Sometimes I want visual info-clutter and sometimes I do NOT.
eecc 3y ago
Hold on, the blurb says the plot contains the San Francisco bridge becoming an inhabited ruin after a quake. Wasn’t that part of the dolphin setting in Johnny Mnemonic?
- boffinAudio 3y ago
  The movie? Yes, they glommed a bunch of Gibson into that movie. But Gibson has had a thing for bridges for a while. Its a thematic device he uses, cleverly, to dissect classism.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  The best part of Johnny Mnemonic (film) is what it is based on Johnny Mnemonic (short story) which is just 41kB or ~10 A4 pages at 12pt. Not so much to fill 96 minutes of the runtime.
pch00 3y ago
So basically, the current iteration of the AVP is the Apple Newton: you can kind of see where the product could lead to but right now it's held back by the realities of current technology.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  The Newton was mostly held back by the lack of money. Something had to be axed and Newton was the nail that stuck out. Apple of today don't have this problem or feature.
  - TillE 3y ago
    The iPhone (2007) was essentially what the Newton (1993) wanted to be, and even it was severely held back by the tech available. It was pretty bad until the 3GS or the iPhone 4. I think it's fair to say the Newton was ~15 years ahead of its time, and any amount of investment could not have significantly accelerated that. You need all the incremental semiconductor industry advancements along the way.
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      I always got the impression that Newton was plenty great for what it was and dearly loved by its users. The Palmpilot was much simpler and it saw great success and was very useful.
octopusRex 3y ago
The experiences he longs for - snakes in trees, balloons in the bakery section - are easily obtained through hallucinogenics.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
Google Glass, Microsoft HoloLens, now this -- I can imagine them being useful for auto mechanics, surgeons, fighter pilots -- while doing their jobs -- but it will be a tool for those jobs, not a regular part of everyday life, and these people will look forward to taking them off at the end of the day. If I'm wrong, and the Apple Cult is able to rebrand glassholes so they're socially acceptable (like they got so many lemmings to wear AirPods), then I may just have to leave human civilization. How intolerable will life be? You walk down the street and there's a social credit score hovering next to you? Your saccades are tracked at a jillion hertz and sold to marketers? No thanks!

Vision 1993

107 points by zdw 3y ago

I've been having a similar thought. The future isn't lugging your computer around on your face. Desktops will stay desktops, just like a workbench. It's about computing the physical world.

noduerme 3y ago
When I went "remote" in the late 90s/early 2000s, pulling out your laptop at a coffeeshop in America (remember those? the ones that weren't chains?) wasn't even common enough to be considered antisocial or an abuse of the space yet. Doing so at a bar at 3pm in a third world country was exotic enough to get you kidnapped. Since then, society went through a phase where it was almost like a showy thing that people could be working away from the office, to the point where everyone started doing it, and then eventually to where if you want to work on a laptop, you self-segregate with everyone else into a starbucks or whatever, and make sure to keep buying coffee or limit your time. We're, in other words, way past the point in human history where walking around with tech on your person is cool because you can do productive things on it, or even cool because you have something new, or cool because the tech itself is cool. It is actually impossible for Apple or anyone else to recapture that now, because everyone now knows that everyone with one of these things is just watching cat videos and looking stupid. Apple seems to be chasing the tech-as-jewelry market with larger and larger ticket items and diminishing returns. Because tech was never jewelry and or status symbol to the people who use it to be productive... and the only card you could ever play in a bar with a laptop, even 25 years ago, was that you were being productive. Not entertaining yourself. I would've been ashamed to sit there and watch cat videos and tune out the world while other people were talking, but I could show them what I was building and get into conversations. This tech violates that norm which Apple assumes is dead - that of not sitting in a social space and walling yourself off from it in a fundamentally antisocial way.
- tlb 3y ago
  For coffee shop computing, I’d like a computer than is clearly only for programming/creative work. When you saw Hemingway with a typewriter in a cafe, or Feynman with pages of squiggles in a bar, it was obvious at a glance they were creating. And 30 years ago, a programmer could also look like that, but laptops have been ruined by entertainment.
  - noduerme 3y ago
    My kind of mid-2010s hack to that end was to use an app that put my whole screen into red monochrome on a black background. It didn't abuse my eyes and, since the whole screen was usually filled with tiny code, people assumed I was doing something important. But more importantly, I think, I came from an epoch where if you're going to take your work out with you, you'd better be prepared to be interrupted and be gregarious and conversational with people. No headphones, no cold shoulder. People ask what you're doing and you take a 30 minute break and show them. Maybe make plans to get drinks after work. I used to meet other coders that way - it was actually how I met most of the really solid people I worked with over the years. Otherwise why would you be out?

ndjshe3838 3y ago

After watching a bunch of reviews I feel like the eyes on the outside is the “Touch Bar” of the AVP. Something that sounds cool in theory but Apple will eventually drop in future models as it just adds extra complexity/cost for little benefit.

prawn 3y ago
That's a good comparison. It strikes me as a visual differentiator as much as anything, which is a shallow purpose. I'd initially assumed that they'd have some grander plans for it, but I assume the lenticular aspect implies that it's not going to be used for any sort of display that isn't inset an inch or two? e.g., it can't show a ghostly reverse view of what someone is seeing, or a visible HUD, or a digital effect (imagine a security guard wearing this, and the display is showing a "scanning, scanning" effect - cool, not useful...). And another confounding thing is that it might've been a pro feature you introduced after a base model, but if the eventual non-pro edition has a plastic front without Eyesight, and it's cheaper and lighter, most people will be happy about that. Ultimately, I think they just decided that it was worth the trade-offs to instantly have a headset that looked different and more futuristic than each competitor. They had to make a splash.
- astrange 3y ago
  It is used for some effects - it flashes when you take a photo, and it guides you through face scanning in initial setup.
  - dharmab 3y ago
    The flash could be a white LED. Apple has some other devices which require another device for setup, so it wouldn't be unusual for them. They could also offer setup at an Apple store.
    - astrange 3y ago
      > Apple has some other devices which require another device for setup, so it wouldn't be unusual for them. Hmm, I think that'd be pretty difficult because you can't guarantee the camera on another phone is good enough, unless you require everyone to have a phone from the last 1-2 years.

SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago

At the time of writing of this comment this story is number one on hacker news front page. While it’s an interesting read, it’s hard for me to want to view it as an interesting take because there is no indication that the writer has ever actually tried the hardware being discussed.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
I don't see how that is particularly relevant really. Reviews of the hardware being discussed are abundant. The point of this article is to share this look back - a book review, taking what we thought of AR in the past and relating it to the present. I had never heard of this book before. That's what I got out of this. MKBHD, Casey Neistat, and all the others have done a fine job of covering the present already.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
  I think it’s relevant specifically because the book itself and the points in the article are talking about physical reactions and responses to the hardware. If it was conceptually more about other things that weren’t directly related to the physical aspect of the interface I would agree with your take. Especially because the article ends with what could be constituted as a somewhat sweeping generalization that directly speaks to the physical interface aspect of the device. This isn’t like reviewing Christopher Nolan’s new psychological thriller in that you can get the basic gist of it from the SparkNotes and say something pithy about society. You need to actually try it to form an opinion when you are talking about how far or not it has come in meeting some science fiction fantasy
  - buffington 3y ago
    It's totally reasonable that one can observe the many videos of the AVP in use and in many real world situations with plenty of evidence of "physical reactions and responses to the hardware," and draw their own conclusions about how those compare with the book they read without owning the damn thing.
3y ago

Mistletoe 3y ago

Sometimes our sci-fi dreams are just that and don't make sense or aren't possible in the real world. Like flying cars, teleportation, faster than light travel, the year of the Linux desktop. I think VR is always going to be like that. It's good for some niche applications, but it just doesn't fit the form factor of humans like a monitor and keyboard or controller does. Our headsets are good enough now that we can't keep saying "well if it just had more X" where X is resolution or whatever moving goalpost they want to put out there. We just don't like crap on our face.

ta8645 3y ago
> We just don't like crap on our face. A lot of people wear glasses without much objection. AR glasses need to be about the same form factor as regular sunglasses today.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  And then what? We just get a different way to interact with screens? Phones and tablets can leverage their size to pack bright displays, tactile controls and large batteries. Targeting the Ray-ban form factor is going to require some ugly sacrifices, and even an optimal solution is going to be a hard sell compared to the miniaturized technology of it's day. I keep hearing the "make AR glasses" shtick, but I don't think there will be real demand for it. You either wear the heavy, light-blocking fighter-pilot headset for full immersion, or you get the dinky 15 degree FOV washed-out Google Glass. And both of them cost a mortgage compared to the smartphone.
  - ta8645 3y ago
    Time will tell, most of your objections are temporary and don't represent any fundamental limit to the technological possibilities, only the current reality. Personally, if nothing else, I would gladly trade a bulky phone for something less intrusive.
    - smoldesu 3y ago

aaron695 3y ago

> I want to be in a park at night and see fiery snakes climbing all the trees. Why the fuck do you want that? Corporate graffiti on nature? I don't mind fairy lights on a tree in some situations. I like tree houses. I like a tree swing. Sometimes real graffiti. Because someone built something, it has value. Some random AI shoves random snakes on trees? Why not sit at home and watch TV on your couch if you don't like trees. An AR reality everyone shares at once with snakes in trees. Like a concert or a light show by an artist. Yep, but it will cost $ to visit. And it'll cost millions to create. > I want to walk into a big-box store and have a huge glowing balloon appear over the Baking Supplies. Who's going to record the data for you? People have tried to map stores for years and it'd work fine with AirPods telling you where to go, or a map on your phone. > I want floating labels to attach to all the different parts of the machine I’m trying to fix. Ikea struggles to make useful paper instructions. Brickit looks interesting, if it was done for mosaics and art like that - https://brickit.app/ https://brickit.app/ > AVP is VR not AR AVP is AR, a strange comment. If you look at the only working commercial AR, it's doctors using it to have a screen next to where they do surgery so they don't have to look away. AVP having a big display anywhere might be it's best hope.

pests 3y ago
> People have tried to map stores for years Google does a good job. I can zoom right into my local Meijer with Maps and into individual sections. > AVP is AR, a strange comment. How so? You are not looking at reality. In fact, reality is blocked. You are looking at screens.
- Someone 3y ago
  I think it’s more likely Meijer did a good job. AFAIK, both Google and Apple (mostly) rely on third parties to give them indoor map data. https://maps.google.com/help/maps/indoormaps/faqs.html https://maps.google.com/help/maps/indoormaps/faqs.html: “What does it mean to be a partner with indoor Google Maps? Google Maps Indoor partners can include their floor plans and labeled layouts of their venues in Google Maps for desktop and mobile. Visitors can see indoor maps on their mobile devices to conveniently find points of interest in supported venues.” https://register.apple.com/indoor https://register.apple.com/indoor: “Easily create detailed maps of your indoor spaces and let visitors see where they are right in your app. Organizations with large public and private spaces like airports, shopping centers, arenas, hospitals, universities, and private office buildings can register for the Indoor Maps Program. Indoor maps are built using industry standard tools and require only your existing Wi-Fi network to enable GPS-level location accuracy so visitors can navigate your spaces with ease.”

seydor 3y ago

Weren't the google glasses better for that?

JoachimS 3y ago

Good article, about Gibsons great book. But I got a bit stuck on the start of the article. It states: "I’ve plowed through the first wave of AVP (Apple Vision Pro) reviews, and it seems pretty obvious that, at the current price and form factor, it’s not gonna be a best-seller." I'm not sure what constitutes a best-seller. But according to several news stories (which may all be based on the same anonymous rumor), Apple has sold 200.000 Apple Vision Pro headsets: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/01/29/apple-vision-pro-headset-sales/ https://www.macrumors.com/2024/01/29/apple-vision-pro-headse... Does anybody know how many headsets the other VR vendors have sold?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
keypusher 3y ago
Oculus has sold 20m+ million headsets. But it’s a very different headset, gaming focused. https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-sales-20-million-retention-struggles/amp/ https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-sales-20-million-retention-st...
- sxp 3y ago
  That was 20m of their 7th-9th headsets (after DK1, DK2, Rift, Rift S, GearVR, Go). Other than the Quest 2, I don't think any VR headset has sold at the rate the AVP is currently selling at.
grumbel 3y ago
Oculus DK1 sold 56,334 Oculus DK2 sold 118,930 Rift and Vive together ~1 million PSVR1 ~6 million Quest123 20+ million

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

chaostheory 3y ago

For a guy who used a typewriter for his stories, William Gibson is a pretty visionary guy.

enos_feedler 3y ago
the future of typewriting was already there, it just wasn't evenly distributed.

rob74 3y ago

> Watching TV, by yourself, on a huge screen, is not the future. Augmenting reality is. I guess the main reason why this novel (and the trilogy that it's part of) is centered on AR is that Gibson had already done the completely immersive "hyper-VR" thing in Neuromancer (and the trilogy it was part of), so he probably wanted to explore something new...

j13n 3y ago

The current trend of projecting information onto our eyes through devices is a primitive form of sensory enhancement. It is time to make a leap towards a more transformative innovation, which could be achieved by transmitting knowledge directly into our brains. This way, we could simply know the name of a plant by looking at it. Reading is primarily about acquiring knowledge. I am personally excited about the idea of augmented intelligence, which would not require strapping a couple of TVs to our faces.

birracerveza 3y ago
See, the nice thing of AR glasses is that you can use them without tampering with the brain, and you can also take them off.

euroderf 3y ago

When there's a working, wearable, hoomin-friendly A/R available, I want a dial on the top to permit more or fewer annotations, kind of like the dial (slider?) on the AVP that fades reality in & out. Sometimes I want visual info-clutter and sometimes I do NOT.

eecc 3y ago

Hold on, the blurb says the plot contains the San Francisco bridge becoming an inhabited ruin after a quake. Wasn’t that part of the dolphin setting in Johnny Mnemonic?

boffinAudio 3y ago
The movie? Yes, they glommed a bunch of Gibson into that movie. But Gibson has had a thing for bridges for a while. Its a thematic device he uses, cleverly, to dissect classism.
justsomehnguy 3y ago
The best part of Johnny Mnemonic (film) is what it is based on Johnny Mnemonic (short story) which is just 41kB or ~10 A4 pages at 12pt. Not so much to fill 96 minutes of the runtime.

pch00 3y ago

So basically, the current iteration of the AVP is the Apple Newton: you can kind of see where the product could lead to but right now it's held back by the realities of current technology.

actionfromafar 3y ago
The Newton was mostly held back by the lack of money. Something had to be axed and Newton was the nail that stuck out. Apple of today don't have this problem or feature.
- TillE 3y ago
  The iPhone (2007) was essentially what the Newton (1993) wanted to be, and even it was severely held back by the tech available. It was pretty bad until the 3GS or the iPhone 4. I think it's fair to say the Newton was ~15 years ahead of its time, and any amount of investment could not have significantly accelerated that. You need all the incremental semiconductor industry advancements along the way.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    I always got the impression that Newton was plenty great for what it was and dearly loved by its users. The Palmpilot was much simpler and it saw great success and was very useful.

octopusRex 3y ago

The experiences he longs for - snakes in trees, balloons in the bakery section - are easily obtained through hallucinogenics.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

FooBarBizBazz 3y ago

Google Glass, Microsoft HoloLens, now this -- I can imagine them being useful for auto mechanics, surgeons, fighter pilots -- while doing their jobs -- but it will be a tool for those jobs, not a regular part of everyday life, and these people will look forward to taking them off at the end of the day. If I'm wrong, and the Apple Cult is able to rebrand glassholes so they're socially acceptable (like they got so many lemmings to wear AirPods), then I may just have to leave human civilization. How intolerable will life be? You walk down the street and there's a social credit score hovering next to you? Your saccades are tracked at a jillion hertz and sold to marketers? No thanks!