Would you feel comfortable wearing one and limiting your awareness of your surroundings on a public bus? In a coffee shop? Sitting outside a coffee shop? In a park? In a pub?
And also your answers may be yes if you are male, but I can imagine in the current world we live in a lot of women would feel potentially at risk if they were wearing these in public.
If I’m taking a commuter train every day , my view is not something great. Most of the time it’s rundown houses, tunnels or fences. This has been my experience in the UK, US and Canada.
If I’m taking a more long distance train, you assume I’m sat on the side with a view. Ever taken a mountain train? One side just gets rocks wizzing by.
You also assume they’re travelling in weather and a time of day that affords them a good view. Traveling at night? Traveling in misty weather?
And all that aside, you assume they’d prefer to look at the same things you do.
There are some views you never get tired of looking at, especially as seasons, weather, clouds and time of the day makes it an ever changing postcard.
All in all in most of europe the trains usually offer nice views and I often find myself daydreaming about climbing that dirt trail on the left with my bike, riding my motorbike on that twisty road on the right side a few minutes later and what kind of life was it living 500 years ago in the old castle I can see here.
Why must we always escape?
Again, you are fortunate to have a view that you enjoy. That doesn’t extend to others, unless you believe that there are no other situations on the planet other than your own.
Probably the point is that there are many mindstates to be in and maybe we should just let folks do their thing.
It’s great he can enjoy it but it’s self centered to tell others to do the same.
Some of us live in places like Baltimore, or Staten Island.
You might find that real life is boring, I find that most tv shows and movies are super predictable, following the very similar scenaristic mechanics and aren't more entertaining. Obviously some are also very nice, but these are the ones you would like to watch comfortably on your sofa or in a theater, not in a train or plane anyway.
Seriously, is everyone on here so narcissistic that they can’t imagine other people want other things?
I've taken the train across the Canadian prairies, and my god is that dull, but I just chatted with people, did a bit on my laptop, looked out the window since there always is one, read, used my Gameboy. If I wanted to completely immerse myself in anything but the train experience, I'd just fly, it's cheaper anyway
But you can still see the world and communicate with others. Why is that materially different than being engrossed in a handheld video game with headphones in?
Also all your examples of other stuff you do to occupy the time, they are all temporary. Why do you think the Vision Pro user would use it the whole ride?
I think this is down to the Boolean nature of “is this normalized or not”
Because it’s not normalized, people don’t afford it the same benefit of the doubt of other things that they have normalized in their life.
I'd only ever consider bringing something that is nearly invisible to both myself and others in terms of weight and required infrastructure, wouldn't bring anything with me for the purpose of occupying my attention that I can't forget I have, or that would consume more than a negligible amount of space/weight; I'll bring a book, but not a tome
Incidentally, Canadian cross-country trains don't even have outlets at the seat as far as I know; they're quite old sadly.
That said, I buy almost no superfluous electronics for raw consumption, and even an iPad Pro would be wildly out of scope, as nice as they seem to be, since although they do have other utility, I can't picture myself doing more than reading or watching videos. On-the-go entertainment is something I try to keep at arms length so I can spend that time at peace.
Fwiw, I do also hope it doesn't become normalized, not to squash others' potential for fun, but because our existing devices already enable people to protect themselves from social interaction on a large scale, which strikes me as damaging.
When I take trains in the USA, I usually look out for a few seconds every couple of minutes, because it's mostly the same -- lower-middle class housing or warehouses if we're in a city, or ugly terrain outside of a city.
These kinds of broad comparisons are utterly useless. Continents are much too large for that kind of thing to be anything resembling accurate.
I went from modern metropolis of skyscrapers and tower cranes to run down rusty industrial facilities that wouldn't look out of place in a STALKER game to sod roofed villages that look as they might have when Napoleon was making an ill fated expedition. Then of course a vast expanse of nothing at all.
Especially if you're travelling through cityscapes that aren't that appealing.