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Comment by woopsn | Hacker News Reader

People seem to think I have trouble understanding what the terms refer to. That's not my point -- you're right in that they are not complex.

But why is virtual reality associated with small screens and head tracking? Why wasn't Everquest on a CRT "virtual reality"? A lot of software calculates probabilities over some distribution, why isn't all that "artificial intelligence"? Why isn't my Subaru's cruise control and lane keeping technology "autopilot" or "self driving"? Why isn't the elevator controller an "agent"? Why aren't my own servers "clouds"?

I don't need the terminology explained, I'm just tired of it. And I do think in many cases it's meant to be dazzling and marketable rather than mean anything.

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> But why is virtual reality associated with small screens and head tracking?

Because this improves the quality of VR.

> Why wasn't Everquest on a CRT "virtual reality"?

It is an extremely limited form of VR.

> why isn't all that "artificial intelligence"?

It is an extremely limited form of AI.

> Why isn't my Subaru's cruise control and lane keeping technology "autopilot" or "self driving"?

It is an extremely limited form of "self driving". (To be more precise, it's Level 1 self autonomy.)

> Why isn't the elevator controller an "agent"

It is an extremely limited form of an agent.

> Why aren't my own servers "clouds"?

They are extremely limited forms of a cloud. (Though I would argue that a cloud needs to be provided by a third party.)

> I don't need the terminology explained, I'm just tired of it.

It sounds like you are refusing to understand how experiences fall somewhere on a spectrum. Is me and my friend tossing a ball around in my backyard "baseball"? What if we get 7 more friends and stand on a diamond and run around the bases? If I come back afterwards and say "we played baseball", even though it wasn't an MLB-regulated official game adjudicated by umpires, are you going to get really upset at me and say that I'm lying and I didn't really play "baseball"? The same principle applies to everything else you've listed here.

Limited says you. I'll pick on your example of VR. Tell a blind person that Everquest is a limited form of VR. You've just bought into "progress". These other experiences likely still haven't been beaten when strictly speaking about real depth as opposed to the superficial.

A blind person can still hear the spatial audio in Everquest. I think they would get the point.

I think asking questions like that for rhetorical effect works in other places, but people here prefer to treat all questions as actual good-faith questions. Even ones that are clearly intended as rhetorical, like yours.

So, I don’t think they are misunderstanding you. It is almost like calling your bluff.

It is an interesting convention.

I don’t dislike these kinds of questions normally. But they do typically lead to a little bit of back and forth. On this site, most interactions are typically only 2-3 posts long. So I think it is better to just state your opinions directly.

> But why is virtual reality associated with small screens and head tracking?

Because it's supposed to simulate reality -- and it does a great job of it. Everquest on a CRT doesn't simulate reality; it's nothing like reality. As the capability of something increases it becomes something else. Cruise control on a car that is sufficiently able to drive a car eventually becomes autopilot. Your own server isn't a cloud but put a large enough of them acting together in a way where each individual machine is entirely redundant and replaceable is a cloud. These words describe actual things. You are a person but why isn't any random clump of cells a person?

Everything is an evolution and everyone wants to be the next form of that evolution, even if it’s not. Marketing is always going to be one step ahead and once we actually do achieve what the last generation is selling, someone new will be selling you on the next step. Today’s “VR” will look extremely different from 2050 VR. That doesn’t mean today we don’t have some form of VR though. I don’t mind it, it’s a conceptual bucket for today’s expectations. And those of us who keep up with things (like all of us on HN for example) understand one another. What would you recommend we call all these things?

In many cases practitioners already have appropriately non-magical language, for clarity in communication.

*-reality interfaces are "immersive", they don't alter or recreate reality.

What artificial intelligence is is (statistical) "inference".

The cloud are various *-providers, "hosting providers", "storage services", etc. In aggregate, "external" or "3rd party" or "outsourced" (computing) infrastructure.

I said it elsewhere -- what frustrates me is that the rest is marketing, but some engineers are willing to accept and even reproduce it for some reason. When Facebook says they're releasing a new reality development platform for the metaverse though, we should roll our eyes, even if the technology is exciting.

These terms have a way of burning people out. I hesitate to use blockchain and A.I. in the same sentence because that's a sure sign the person doesn't have anything to say.

I hated the terms "blog" and "podcast" when they were new. I thought they were so dumb and unnecessary. But they are useful to describe actual things happening in the real word. This is just how the intersection of words and technology works.

Why is a laptop not desktop? Aren't GNU/Linux desktop OS? Why is Android a phone OS? I thought it was supposed to be a camera firmware GUI toolkit?

I'm not concerned about trademarks. I'm concerned about what isn't trademarked -- language which instead we are all supposed to adopt and throw around as much as possible. As I said: * reality, AI, cloud, etc.

I get that loosely thrown around buzzwords are annoying, that sentiment I sympathize with, but your examples seem to contain multiple category errors e.g. HUD is a type of AR device, using cloud(noun) is outsourcing(verb) but outsourcing is definitely not appropriate term for cloud tech stacks, and so on.

Digital computer technologies aren't continuously differentiable so made up terms for grouping each distinct tech stacks is unavoidable. AI is linear algebra but grouping up all AI/ML/RL/perceptron into "electronic linear algebra technology" is not helpful.

> why is virtual reality associated with small screens and head tracking?

...because that's what it is? surely you understand that the difference between 3D, near-eye displays and traditional 2D screens warrants a different label

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