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Comment by dymk | Hacker News Reader

This article confirms a lot of the suspicions I had about Magic Leap's product, which is unfortunate. Had the company not overhyped the product and shipped with expectations so high, perhaps they could have had something which would actually impress the general public.

Unrelated, this weird aside is my least favorite part of the article:

> Magic Leap is almost entirely built on the visions of grown men wanting to immerse themselves in fantasy worlds ...

> It is telling that the most compelling glimpse of a possible future with Magic Leap was relayed to me by nonwhite, non-male product manager

There's this implication that the white male leadership is only interested in the frilly escapist aspect of the product, and it's those in minority groups who are actually going to be pushing the boundaries of tech. Why include this in the article? Does the author honestly believe that's true? Do jabs at white men get clicks and heads nodding.now?

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Interesting that you see that as a "jab against white men" - I read it as a jab against monoculture. That the company's monoculture is middle aged white cis dudes is kind of beside the point.

A company this big needs to address most, if not all, people. The need for escapist leisure activity is something only relatively privileged people have. You only have to look at Google Glass to see what that limited appeal does to a product. It's a valid commercial consideration.

> It is telling that the most compelling glimpse of a possible future with Magic Leap was relayed to me by nonwhite, non-male product manager

Yeah but the language used here makes it seem like white male product managers can't relay compelling visions for Magic Leap's future which isn't necessarily a correct statement.

They could have, but didn't.

The implication is that the PM in question was trying to advance their career on meritocracy grounds, while the other PMs get by on connections. I'm reminded of Theranos' extremely well-connected board.

I don't think there would be anything wrong with trying to market Leap as a gaming peripheral, but that implies a much smaller valuation, so ...

Why mention the race and gender of the culture, if the specific race and culture aren't relevant? The author easily could have made that point by saying "sci-fi obsessed leadership" instead of "white male sci-fi obsessed leadership".

Because white male culture is broader than just sci-fi? I'm making the point that both one specific culture means monoculture, and I think pointing out that it's white male is important. Techbroism is a thing. White men aren't incapable of empathy, but it's very much more difficult to address a diverse audience from one fixed viewpoint.

"white male" isn't a culture. I don't know if you're aware, but not every white male is the same, they come from diverse backgrounds just like every other race and gender.

You intersect with many cultures — examples might include religious culture, pop culture, Southern American culture, etc.

"White male culture" is a thing, but it's easy to be white and not aware of that if you take it for granted and/or think of it as "the default". (As an analogy, you might think you don't have "an accent" because you think of yours as the "normal" one.)

Is this the sci-fi loving Star Trek convention attendee "white male culture". or is it the Sunday night football, never misses a game "white male"? Or perhaps you meant the cow rustling rodeo loving white male culture out on the ranch?

I really don't know what "white male culture" you are referring to.

Would you feel the same way about an article lamenting "black male culture"?

What is the accusation here - that "black male culture" wouldn't be agreed to exist, or that nobody would be allowed to lament it?

There are certainly groups that lament "black male culture", with varying political views. On the left, you might find that criticism in views like intersectional black feminism against "misogynoir" - macho behaviour and chauvinism especially by black men.

On the the political right, criticism of "black male culture" hardly needs naming.

Do you also disagree that there is such a thing as an image of masculinity?

But why does the article go out of its way to say the white male leadership is interested in the escapist, scifi, entertainment aspect of AR, and makes a special point of the nonwhite nonmale manager being the one actually coming up with compelling usecases?

It seems like a cheap grab for article attention, piggy backing on the current political climate, and not a genuine analysis on why ML is failing to come up with inventive AR usecases. It cheapens the point the article could have made, but fails to explore at all: Diversity is needed to develop a product that appeals to everyone.

This thread is entertaining as an object lesson in white male fragility. Obsessing about a side note in an article because the scrutiny normally reserved for nonwhite-males is glancingly turned their way...

Instead of indulging the sense of alarm you get from this sort of (very mild) scrutiny, try to get outside of your ego and consider that this feeling you have is others' normal state of existence. You'll adapt better as demographics change and the wheel turns, and introspection is good for you.

Smile more, and stop being so emotional. /s

What about the thread seems "fragile" to you? It didn't seem like anyone was taking personal offense to the comment, only pointing out that it was oddly irrelevant, as though the author went far out of their way to criticize white men. Certainly no "sense of alarm" or "ego". Seems like you've gone well out of your way to conflate an observation with a rather dramatic (and frankly offensive--I don't imagine women of color taking kindly to being called 'fragile', for example) emotional response...

As someone who was born as part of the race and gender being disparaged in the above comments, maybe I should be thankful. Yes, those comments were slightly hurtful, but mostly it was just really weird feeling hatred from another person based on the color of my skin and gender. I haven’t had a chance to feel that very often, and I honestly think the exercise was meaningful. Thanks for putting me in that position to know how much it hurts when people blindly hate based on race and gender. It might help me see things differently in the future (shrug). That being said, I would never disparage another race in the way that you just did. Way to keep it classy.

Oh, there's the accusation of white male fragility. How disappointing.

I'd call this article out just the same if it was calling out black women or lesbian Latinos.

How about instead, let's ask journalists to meet a bar of treating all classes of people equally, and not making pointless comments about someone's race and gender.

I don't think the vast majority of people are oblivious to what the standard archetype of a white man in technology is, why is it so wrong to use that as context?

because its as bad as talking about the stereotypical black man in the same context

people are more complicated than race and gender

Why do you believe that to be true?

Replace men by women or white by black. Do you still read it as monoculture ?

In the context of feminine hygiene products, or the black lives matter movements, yes. In the context of a high valued venture funded technology company, no.

Escapist leisure activity is for more than just privileged people, see, e.g., video games, sports and movies.

Google Glass did not fail because it lacked a diverse perspective. It failed because it was a garbage product, way too expensive, early, and with no compelling functionality. (I feel the same way about HoloLens at it's current stage. I have not tried Magic Leap.)

Also, the diverse take was: "who spoke to me convincingly about a world freed from the tyranny of browser tabs, where you could ‘leave’ web pages in physical spaces where you’d need them; recipes in the kitchen, research articles in the office". That seems to me to be a far more 'privileged' use case than escapist entertainment.

> The need for escapist leisure activity is something only relatively privileged people have.

Are you kidding? Escapist leisure activities is one of the most broadly consumed forms of entertainment. Have you ever heard of TV or movies?

Sure, but it's hardly the best value proposition to justify a $2000+ new product type that claims to be a revolutionary form of technology.

The point is a common journalistic mechanism: throw in a controversial side note, and somewhere morons will make that an issue and drive readership of the article in outrage. You fell into this con...

The problem with that theory is I read a good portion of that article before I found out I was out of touch with (virtual) reality...

Because somehow we’ve got to the point where being racist is PC. As long as it’s against the right group.

Oh come on.

Do we even have mods here?

Why does every thread have to turn into this same fucking discussion, instead of the actual topic of the post.

Can’t we unhook these subthreads and just push them into some ‘discuss white man stuff’ bin where people who care can go and yell at each other?

If they hadn’t done what they did, they would be the other company that was open the entire time. Meta Vision, who recently went out of business.

> Why include this in the article?

The fragility of white men who lose their shit at the slightest mention of their race and gender is fucking baffling, especially when compared to the routine dehumanisation that black people or women have to put up with every day.

Please stop feeding the "Us vs Them" narrative. We all know the history of white-euro aggression & crimes. By all means, call out the wrongdoers, but giving credence to the binary narrative only perpetuates and obfuscates the real harms done by modern white, brown, yellow men & women.

White men: less likely to be murdered, raped, sexually assaulted, sexually abused, involuntarily held in MH services, subjected to rapid tranq in those services, etc etc.

Of course there's a them and us and it's fucking pathetic that people like parent poster only care when their demographic receives most mild criticism and do fuck all about real injustice.

Tldr stop being such fucking snowflakes.

It a mechanism for controversy, which drives readership.

I suspect this is the case, and is exactly why I felt it was worth being commented on. It really cheapens an otherwise great analysis of ML.

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