Transhumanism and Augmented Reality – A brave new augmented world | Hacker News Reader

Transhumanism and Augmented Reality – A brave new augmented world

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29 pointsbrna13 comments

I don't think that "immersive experiences" are going to play huge part in our lives. The other side of "immersion" is escapism from the real world, which is the most complex RPG, so "immersion" would be rather likely to be absorbed by current economical mechanisms to deepen that escapism. Information access is so trivial even with current technologies, that it's not something that makes anybody high (as with everything: what makes one high is acceleration, not speed, so new technologies are charming at the beginning, than they are absorbed as habits).

I thought the same, then lockdown happened. I was unable to freely roam the streets for weeks. I would have loved a really good VR experience to escape to. We need to support new developments so we get to our goal of truly immersive tech, VR or AR depending on the application.

Sure, I completely agree. There are many fields where those technologies will be able to do great job.

I just doubt the very big vision of "immersive revolution", as I think that most usages will be strictly for entertainment, and some more specific cases like therapies and simulations.

Why not jobs? I can certainly see a whole new cyber economy cropping up to cater to the whims of cyber denizens.

Why would the ‘caterer’ need to be in a VR experience themselves for that?

Try doing this without AR -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKNbRRRFhqY

In the past it would require hiring an entire vfx team. And this is just interacting with more or less static content. Things get even more interesting with dynamic systems where you adjust one parameter of the system and the entire world around you changes.

For me it's a quite distracting experience (the whole AR part, with glitches and lack of background). I think that well-done animation could be much better (and would't require more effort)

In regards to the immersive experiences comment, if we share the augmented experience, we could also use AR to statically or permanently build AR layers on top of our physical surroundings, removing the need to buy some of the appliances and decorations that we presently use. Why buy and deliver physical accessories when you can present them via AR. And if we use that kind of setup, our surroundings could be full of immersive experiences.

John C. Wright had much to say about all this in The Golden Age.

Thank you. I am putting The Golden Age on the top of my reading list. Any other recommendations?

Note that The Golden Age is book 1 of "The Golden Oecumene" trilogy [0].

(FWIW, I read the trilogy years ago and enjoyed it; also by Wright, but not about AR/VR/etc., is the six-book "Count to the Eschaton Sequence". I enjoyed reading the first 2-3 books and hope to finish it eventually).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Oecumene

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/903/

Insert "search engine" instead of "Wikipedia" and I am sold.

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