Things we didn't know about ourselves
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I don't think the invention of social media shows people prefer attention to privacy. This is a false dichotomy. Privacy doesn't mean not getting attention, it means not having aspects of your life that you want to keep private revealed.
Maybe what this tell us is that even deep thinkers aren't great at grappling with large numbers.
edit: Not to mention a lot of social media presence is 100% performance. It's not really an invasion of privacy, as it has very little to do with the private life of the creator.
There has been a ton of hype around "you can work in VR and it feels like a real place" and "you can have tons of screens!".
But that being said, the below article about using Meta Oculus VR goggles to "work from space" came out over TWO years ago: https://medium.com/immersedteam/working-from-orbit-39bf95a6d...
Plus, that software even works on Linux!
What is going on now that it seems like the rest of the world suddenly discovered a feature of the previous generation VR goggles?
Is it just "because Apple"?
Is it better marketing? (e.g. are more influencers involved)
I would be curious to hear HN's take on this.
It takes more attention to notice that you can combine a niche gaming device with a random 3rd party application to do work in VR, than the attention it takes to notice that Apple did a thing. Everyone, even people that aren't typically Apple consumers, would notice that Apple released a new product.
It sorta reminds me of the PS3. It came out at the same time as Blu-ray players and was capable of playing Blu-ray movies as a bonus feature. While the PS3 cost $600, the Blu-ray players cost $1,000+, and people still purchased the players. For people that were looking for a device to play movie discs, it took too much attention to notice that a gaming device offers that and much more for much less.
I never saw a useful demo of virtual fixed screens in real 3d space, from Oculus. ie Both fixed in relation to my head position and fixed in the space of other rooms, with realtime content...I saw VR games from the Oculus marketing. I don't care about that (although I have coworkers who do).
More monitors of arbitrary size help me as I've gotten older. Year ago, I worked in an office, instead of at home. Remote-first attitudes have shifted how I work and are able to conceptualize things I want to get done.
The Oculus has weird hand grippers. I don't want to carry those. Give me my mouse and keyboard for interaction and build for that.
I noticed because it was marketed better and at the right time for my age group.
I can probably think of more in another 5 min. That being said, I still wont pay 3500 for a helmet, even when it enables these things. We will wait.
> Is it just "because Apple"?
To some extent yes - Jobs built a company that was less about innovation and more about polishing and packaging existing tech for the masses. This isn't bad - Apple has made some great stuff, and they have innovated some, but a lot of the innovation is in UX not tech.
Things apple "invented" that had been around for a while:
* the mouse
* the GUI
* MP3 players
* the smart phone
* the tablet
* virtual desktops
* video calls
And plenty more I've since forgotten. We used to joke about Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field in reference to this phenomenon.
The mouse hasn't changed in 40 years.
Windows 3.1's GUI beat the pants off Apple's.
Virtual desktops - maybe, but I still don't know anyone who uses this and not really sure most people know it exists.
Video calls - No idea what Apple has to do with this space at all unless you mean FaceTime? I don't think that was really a game changer.
Also worth noting - the mouse was invented over 50 years ago and has basically been the same since, the biggest change was consumer devices moving from a ball to a laser. 41 years ago was when apple first released a product with a mouse. From the wikipedia page on the mouse:
> However, the mouse remained relatively obscure until the appearance of the Macintosh 128K (which included an updated version of the single-button[54] Lisa Mouse) in 1984
It's been a really long time since I used Windows 3.1 or System 7, but I'm not seeing it; in what way was Windows better?
From what I'm reading about the Apple Vision Pro, it's not there yet either.
The avg consumer distrusts Facebook more than Apple.
So yes, the most popular tech company + marketing.
A few random reasons:
- The Oculus goggles become uncomfortable and sweaty fairly quickly
- They use Fresnel lenses and (I think...) foveated rendering, which means you really only get sharp view straight in front of you. Not where your eyes are looking, where your head is pointing. So looking at the other screen, or even scanning text, means moving your head.
- The awareness of your surroundings is basically zero so it's easy to "lose" your mouse. Or, in my case I was using a wireless keyboard, and I could misplace it. There is a passthrough mode, but the resolution is garbage and it's annoying to get in and out of (in theory you can tap the headset, in practice it works maybe 50% of the time)
Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting...
Anyway, all that said I think there's potential that AV could do it significantly better. No idea if they actually did do it better, though.
Imagine watching from space as drivers detour around an accident ahead almost like they had foreknowledge of conditions they can’t have seen yet…
Um... I do? And almost everyone I know?
We have had stereoscopic viewers for a century or more, way before any VR existed. I also remember the VRBoy from the early 90s and many people could see the potential for that technology back then.
We have had drama queens/kings for a long as there have been people that preferred attention over privacy. Social media might make it worse but it isn't new.
But also, the experience is watching something close up is qualitatively different — yes, focus and accommodation, but also relative motions if it’s handheld, and just the perception of size. (Same FOV, but you “know” it’s small and close rather than big and farther away.)
I think Kevin Kelley’s larger point is that our needs are either more plastic than we thought or there are wrinkles in the sorts of things we’re willing to accept, and that’s sort of interesting and fun to think about.
I'm guessing that, in general, the people who are using their phones as TVs are not the ones with 42" 4K televisions and a 8' living room or, if they are, they're kids getting the privacy to watch what they want in their own rooms.
Body language has been around for a good long time
Detailed spoken language has been around for a less long time
If we had chromatophores what would language be like?
We train children to speak, and speech is very important. Some people learn to draw, paint, etc.
We train children to read and write, and convert written words to speech.
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I apologize if my words are not clear. I have to unfocus my mind a little bit to see my point myself.
Being able to record and send pictures and video in near real time is very new to humanity.
In particular, scientists have observed male cuttlefish displaying "I'm a male, let's mate" signals at a female, while simultaneously sending a false "I'm a female, court me" coloration on the opposite side to distract a rival.
Hey baby, I'm soooo
gotta light? /\ / drunk!
\--ᔦꙬᔨ---/
/||\I think it's possible that many people want both, each in different areas of life. It's not necessarily an either/or.
I don't know that the classical assumption was that people preferred privacy as a whole. People who lived as hermits have generally been seen as eccentric and abnormal, though sometimes admirable.
But with the internet pushing the possibility of living a private life to its extremes, the unsuitability of it for most people becomes more obvious.
Fictional depictions of a tablet form factor appear to go back to Asimov's original Foundation in 1951.
"Isaac Asimov described a Calculator Pad in his novel Foundation (1951); Stanisław Lem described the Opton in his novel Return from the Stars (1961)."
> “I am pretty sure that we did not know that we humans much prefer personal attention to personal privacy. Until we invented the technology of social media, we thought we naturally favored privacy over attention, but we were also wrong about that. We found out that when given a choice people prefer to reveal themselves to get personal attention rather than the obscurity of privacy.”
I’ve been interested to read some contrarian thinking by Venkatesh Rao (Against Waldenponding <https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/against-waldenponding>) and others, about the ways this species-wide preference could/does benefit us, and how we might work with it rather than try to fight it.
It's much more sinister than that. In what I consider my best moments, I want to destroy the damn thing.
If I understand you correctly, then just to clarify: the author disagrees with you, and considers you to be the selfish free-rider in that sentence.
A shockingly inaccurate statement right from the start. I stopped reading after this sentence.
[citation needed]
I brought my own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_access#Digital_divide
Also, the meaning of "unconnected" varies widely. Many of the citation in the second link aren't referring to basic cell phones. E.g., the 2017 (which, again, is seven years old) Wireless Broadband Alliance paper defines unconnected as "an unconnected individual was defined as an individual who does not have access to or cannot afford broadband connectivity."
The huge proportion of the population that I know in, say, Kenya, who use WhatsApp and use cell phones to pay for goods, do not have broadband. But the quote in question was "connected electronically." These people are definitely connected electronically.
They also don't define connectivity, but the section is titled "connectivity/broadband" so I assume that, again, they're only referring to broadband connectivity.
1. https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2023-09-12-unive...
And no, there are many remote areas where this is still untrue, many are still disconnected from what we are talking about.
It is very odd that this point is actually being argued.