Apple to Replace its iPhone with Augmented Reality, Starting with AR Headset

[Frodo]

Apple has decided on Augmented Reality, starting with the headset -but it won't fully replace the iPhone for ten years:

Kuo: Apple’s AR headset to launch in 2022 with Mac-level computing power, will operate without the iPhone

[Dr. MB]

Technology has gone far enough. We don't need to progress any further in this realm. Only bad things will happen.

[Frodo]

Good to see the Luddites are here in force. 

[Agonized-Statism]

Not surprising given Facebook's metaverse project. I'm not sure the technology is there for a Snow Crash world yet, though. The track record for VR and AR products is really bad, and it's never what they hype it up to be. This reminds me of the 3D printing hype in the early 2010s, when it didn't end up getting big and facilitating reshoring and micromanufacturing as anticipated. I don't see this panning out within a decade. It's pretty obviously just Facebook trying to distract people from its problems with some new gee whiz thing and all the other tech companies keeping up with the Joneses.

I could also obviously talk about how there's far more productive technologies we could be researching right now, but I'm really not in the mood to get into a multi-page debate with some tough guy basement-dwelling libertarian whose best argument for this wonderful business cycle is "muh human nature".

Not that I wouldn't enjoy a Star Trek holodeck

[All Along The Watchtower]

Reject Modernity (Silicon Valley)
Embrace Tradition (Reading books, going outside, and being physically present with friends and family)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Remember Google Glass? This ain't gonna happen.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Good to see the Luddites are here in force. 

The day I replace my eyes with a telephone is the day I'm blinded by a stone-burner nuke.

[Utah Neolib]

No

[It’s so Joever]

Lol at the usual overreacters. The metaverse is simply a new dimension we are entering into. It all is still insignificant compared to god’s infinite realm, and this is just a tiny drop in the bucket. Humans will always “progress” although it will never be anything compared to the infinity of the lord.

This is just Atlas posters unable to cope with change, which is perfectly human, even if irrational.
“Real life”, “not real life”, it all is insignificant in the grand scope of things. What is real to you is just a temporary phase of existence, don’t get too attached to it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Lol at the usual overreacters. The metaverse is simply a new dimension we are entering into. It all is still insignificant compared to god’s infinite realm, and this is just a tiny drop in the bucket. Humans will always “progress” although it will never be anything compared to the infinity of the lord.

This is just Atlas posters unable to cope with change, which is perfectly human, even if irrational.
“Real life”, “not real life”, it all is insignificant in the grand scope of things. What is real to you is just a temporary phase of existence, don’t get too attached to it.

The doomsayers about previous stages of high-tech change, like Web 1.0->Web 2.0 and flip phones->smartphones, were entirely correct and indeed underreacted if anything when it came to these changes' corrosive effects on society, despite having at the same time overreacted to the possibility of more "hard sci-fi" problems.

[parochial boy]

Lol at the usual overreacters. The metaverse is simply a new dimension we are entering into. It all is still insignificant compared to god’s infinite realm, and this is just a tiny drop in the bucket. Humans will always “progress” although it will never be anything compared to the infinity of the lord.

This is just Atlas posters unable to cope with change, which is perfectly human, even if irrational.
“Real life”, “not real life”, it all is insignificant in the grand scope of things. What is real to you is just a temporary phase of existence, don’t get too attached to it.

The doomsayers about previous stages of high-tech change, like Web 1.0->Web 2.0 and flip phones->smartphones, were entirely correct and indeed underreacted if anything when it came to these changes' corrosive effects on society, despite having at the same time overreacted to the possibility of more "hard sci-fi" problems.

That said, a lot of the problems of the internet of today probably aren’t inherent consequences of the technology but rather bound up in the Wild West, ultracapitalist, unregulated environment that they exist in. I’m fairly, maybe not optimistic, but hopeful that the regulatory environment and state action is capable of catching up.

With the « metaverse » well, call me old fashioned, but I like the feeling of the wind on my face and the sun on my skin. Not whatever make believe dystopia our tech overlords are now offering us.

[If my soul was made of stone]

The gee-whiz pop-sci idea that the acceleration of technocapital is indefinite and inherently a force for good is exactly what scares me the most about the present political and economic order. I don't trust unbridled technological advancement to make a 180 and solve the all-encompassing problems it's created that have destroyed human experience and our relationship with the other living beings that are our kin and equals, or for there to be a means within capitalism to correct capitalism's flaws as the new generation of technocrats say with wide eyes.

I don't normally argue my most sincere and immediate beliefs on here 'cause they're not that applicable to most situations and most folks don't like to engage with them, but it is a moral imperative for all of creation for this course to be reversed before growth eats itself alive. Of course that isn't happening and instead we'll have to piece things together post-collapse in a way that hopefully those still around will ensure doesn't follow this same idolatrous death spiral. Nature is in isolation a homeostatic mechanism that human hubris has stressed to the limits, and it's embarrassing that the destructive impact of our machinations hasn't been adequately comprehended by those responsible for them in the thousands of years that we've been drifting apart from our origins.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

What is even the point of this?

[RINO Tom]

What is even the point of this?

To help with SoCiAl DiStAnCiNg!  They're just doing their part to KeEp Us SaFe !!

[Frodo]

I can see why Apple chose to go with AR as opposed to all the other options it considered:

Augmented Reality Benefits Us All

It is also apparently a potential gamechanger for the disabled among us, increasing their sense of independence. 

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The gee-whiz pop-sci idea that the acceleration of technocapital is indefinite and inherently a force for good is exactly what scares me the most about the present political and economic order.

The "hurr durr Thomas Edison was a witch" viral Tumblr post from 201whatever and its consequences...

[DavidB.]

Forget China - this sort of stuff is the biggest danger to our way of life and our freedom.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That Forbes piece is chilling.

It is increasingly clear that the consumer market for these "augmented reality" technologies will be among the poor, the aging, and the out-of-shape.

It will be the consolation for those who are disappointed with the results of anti-aging technology or unable to afford the cosmetic treatments available to the rich and famous.

It will be a refuge for people who are increasingly limited in their mastery of physical space on account of plummeting living standards, out-of-control crime, ubiquitous pollution, and the enclosure of the planet's remaining habitable zones by an elite minority of techno-overlords who will stand Above the API that orders the rest of our lives.

The rather alarming tendency of Cold Lazarus ('well you've got to think of the cripples and the misfits') to be the most predictively accurate Dystopia continues unabated, I see.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

To state the obvious, most people on this forum have been living in an "alternate" or "augmented" reality for a decade or more. I'm sure that most of us have spent excessive amounts of time posting, mindless "surfing" the internet and otherwise decomposing into a passive consumer of whatever garbage is being fed to us by algorithms - we're probably more sensitive to the deleterious effects this has on us than most other people in society because, well, we've already experienced the reality, haven't we?

To be clear, I am not attacking the character of the forum, which I see as an outpost of a prior culture that once dominated virtual spaces - one that is organic and that has an old-timey feel of a Society, where people are united by some interest in a hobby or passion and there is a democratic aspect i.e. no algorithm tries to maximize or sort certain viewpoints over others. Any crank can say what they want to say and it will be seen. However, we've all seen how the barbarism elsewhere has encroached upon the forum. Increasingly, one gets the sense that posters are sock puppets performing to maximize algo points on some subreddit or to maximize RT's elsewhere. One also gets the sense that people more and more inhabit echo chambers utterly divorced from reality.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Lol at the usual overreacters. The metaverse is simply a new dimension we are entering into. It all is still insignificant compared to god’s infinite realm, and this is just a tiny drop in the bucket. Humans will always “progress” although it will never be anything compared to the infinity of the lord.

This is just Atlas posters unable to cope with change, which is perfectly human, even if irrational.
“Real life”, “not real life”, it all is insignificant in the grand scope of things. What is real to you is just a temporary phase of existence, don’t get too attached to it.

No offense is intended by this but this is ignorance masquerading as pompous arrogance, the Duning-Krueger effect on full display. Go to a library near you and check-out Bowling Alone and read it. I also recommend reading Robert Putnam's latest book, the Upswing.  To be sure, things are changing - they are changing for the worst, particularly in the US, but around the world also, changing so that human beings are further apart, more lonely, less solidaristic, less together, less trusting, more self-centered, more narcissistic. Technology plays a substantial role in this process - it isn't just smartphones or Web 2.0, it was radio, television etc.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Besides continually alienating us from our own sense of reaity and humanity, technological innovation has been great for wars, fascism and other forms of authoritarianism.

Indeed, the story of both the past century and the present century could plausibly be described as that of technological innovation enabling authoritarianism, genocide, terrorism, deadlier forms of war--from WWI to the rise of Mussolini and Hitler, from the Holocaust and Hiroshima + Nagasaki to mass surveillance and the rise of armed drones, from NSO Group enabling Saudi Arabia to track dissidents it wants to murder to Facebook and WhatsApp enabling genocide and communalist violence in South Asian countries, from the likes of ISIS and Neo-Nazis recruiting "lone wolves" over the Internet, there are countless examples.

And all that without going into the effects of contemporary technological innovation on things like economic and social inequality, rental and housing markets, and quality of life for so many people around the world....