Our Slovenly Willingness
Apple's Vision Pro might be the future of computing, but it's another step toward the end of community. Count me out.
If you think that our current generation of digital technology, headlined by the smartphone, is disrupting your ability to be present with the people around you, hold on to your hats. The Apple Vision Pro, for whatever technological magic it may impart, is just the next step in the relentless march of our technological obsession and its implicit goal of turning us from creatures into machines.
Apple is touting the Vision Pro as the future of computing—declaring that it is ushering in a new era that they’re calling spatial computing. The idea is that the interfaces to our digital world can now be overlaid anywhere and everywhere. No longer tied to a physical glowing rectangle, we’ll be able to populate our worlds with screens wherever we wish.
The technology is impressive. But why exactly are we building this? I like more monitor space as much as the next guy and I can see the upsides to putting virtual screens all around me if I’m working on a project with lots of moving parts. But despite these potential advantages, I’m pretty sure that moving in this direction will not help us live fuller lives, at least not without very intentional boundaries in place around how and when we use this technology. Whatever productivity gain spatial computing unlocks won’t hold a candle to the price that we’ll pay for it.
If this is the future of computing, I’m out.
A whole new layer of distraction
To be clear, I’m pretty torn about this. I love technology and digital devices and Apple devices in particular. I still fondly remember the devices that were a significant part of my childhood, from the SEGA Dreamcast that my brother and I got for Christmas one year to my first chunky Toshiba laptop running Windows 95. While it wasn’t until high school that I got my first iPhone, I still remember the thrill of unboxing the new-to-me, previous-generation iPhone I’d buy from a family friend each year.
But as big tech slowly but surely marches us toward their vision of utopia, I’m increasingly feeling at odds with the core values of that worldview. Technology is getting increasingly close to us: personal, portable, and wearable. As they get closer, the power of our devices to shape us and our communities continues to increase.
What gets hidden from view is that every time we choose to invite a new device into our lives, we’re making a bargain. The framework of the Innovation Bargain that I wrote about recently helps to make these tradeoffs clear, but unfortunately, we’re conditioned to be blind to the sacrifices required by our technology. Big tech is not after our flourishing, at least as one of their top priorities. As much as they talk a big game about connecting us to each other through social media and running commercials about the power of FaceTime to connect grandkids with their grandparents, they continue to plead ignorance to the harmful effects that devices are simultaneously having on us as individuals and as communities. It’s not so much that there is anything intrinsically problematic about any specific device, at least not at first sight. A super-portable camera that fits in our pockets and gives us unfettered 24/7 access to the internet is astoundingly powerful. But that power comes at a cost.
When computers were first invented, their size and power requirements meant you had no choice but to go to them. You couldn’t take them with you. Engineers and technology designers ever since have been working hard to chip away at this limitation. The most popular technologies of our day are designed to be ultra-portable, able to be carried with us each and every moment. This is highlighted by one of the most important specs of any device, its battery life—an ever-present reminder of the limits of our independence. What started with the mainframe moved to the desktop computer, then to the laptop, and finally to the defining device of the last two decades, the smartphone.
But if we think that the smartphone disrupts our ability to be present with and attend to the people around us, just wait. If Apple’s vision for the future of computing is realized, it’s going to make our addictions to our smartphones seem quaint.
Obscured vision
Apple’s Vision Pro headset is without a doubt a technical marvel. I’ve yet to get the chance to try it out, but from some of the early reviews, it seems that Apple nailed the technical details. But the Vision Pro is not just a fancy new toy. It’s a strategic play to shape the story of our future.
It’s one thing to use this thing in the office to replace your existing interactions with screens. But that’s not the goal. The Vision Pro is a wearable technology. It’s best seen as the next iteration of the Apple Watch and the AirPods, not the iPhone or MacBook. The idea is not that you’ll put this thing on when you sit down at your desk and then take it off when you leave to go to a meeting. The ultimate goal is to have you wake up in the morning, grab this thing off your nightstand, and wear it all day long. It’s meant to be a part of you and never apart from you.
Whatever you think about YouTuber Casey Neistat, I think he understands Apple’s vision for this new gadget. In a video review he posted over the weekend, he took the Apple Vision Pro around New York City for the day. In a particularly prophetic moment of the interview, he’s sitting in Times Square, surrounded by people, remarking at how fully engrossed he is in the virtual world presented by the Vision Pro headset, even as people mill all around him.
So the idea of spatial computing, it doesn't make sense to me when I'm sitting in my office. I've got multiple screens. But right now I'm like in the city. I'm in the middle of Times Square. I've got my virtual keyboard here. I've got Apple TV there. I've got YouTube safaris open here. And it all kind of works. Like this. What I've got going on right now, this is wild. It's impossible for me to imagine that you can't see what I can see. Everything seems so real. And then I can just stand up.
It’s interesting to notice the discrepancy between Neistat’s experience of the device and Apple’s marketing materials. If you scroll through the Vision Pro webpage, you’ll notice all of the marketing shots show the headset being used in private settings—sitting in your living room, working from your desk, or watching videos from your couch.
But these suggested use cases are not really honest. You’ll notice that in all these shots, people are using the headset alone. That’s no mistake. Apple is trying to convince you that this device is only going to impact you and your personal interactions with technology. They’re trying to be very careful to avoid the mistakes of Google Glass, recognizing that these types of devices open up all sorts of thorny issues once you’re using them among other people. It’s also intentional that there are no examples of multiple people using Vision Pro headsets together, as this would draw attention to the way they would disrupt normal interactions and in-person community. But if we look beyond the carefully curated narrative, the embedded intention within the Vision Pro is much more closely aligned with the way that Neistat actually uses it.
Something happened today that was completely unexpected, and that's something I don't think anyone else has really touched on…I just left these on the entire day…And after a couple of hours of running around the streets of New York, as in not in a controlled environment, my brain sort of clicked, and it just forgot that I was looking through cameras and screens, and it just took what it saw as reality. And that is where that profound moment came from.
Neistat might be experiencing the future, but I’m pretty sure it’s not one that I’m interested in being part of. He’s sitting in Times Square literally seeing his own version of the world as other humans walk by him with virtual screens blocking them from view. His entire vision is mediated through the device strapped to his head. After the experience, he reflects:
And what occurred to me, as I was sitting there in Times Square on a bench, strangers all around me, the real world moving all around me, but I had like a big screen up where I was watching a Mr. Beast video, and over here I had this keyboard that I could interact with, and over here I had my iMessages, and over here I had my Apple TV, and then all of my apps. And they're floating in Times Square in the middle of New York City. They're floating there, and I'm actually there, and there's actual humans around me. And in that moment, I was like…this is it. This is the future of computing that everyone's been promising for like the last 15 years.
The future is now according to Casey Neistat. But is this really the future of computing that we want? We already know how our phones so easily distract us from giving our full attention to the people we care most about. Do we really want to make this even worse by sticking a big chunk of glass over our eyes, no matter how magical and sophisticated?
Snail mail and farming
Ever since I was first introduced to Wendell Berry a few years ago he has loomed large in my imagination. It’s delightful to me that a man like Berry, who opts for snail mail over email and loves to spend his days working on his farm in rural Kentucky is one of the most prescient and incisive critics of technology that I know.
As I’ve been revisiting his work lately I read part of his compilation of essays Life Is a Miracle. In a sub-collection of essays addressing Edward O. Wilson’s book Consilience, Berry writes a cutting paragraph at the end of his chapter titled “Creatures as Machines” decrying our submission.
What I am against—and without a minute's hesitation or apology—is our slovenly willingness to allow machines and the idea of the machine to prescribe the terms and conditions of the lives of creatures, which we have allowed increasingly for the last two centuries, and are still allowing, at an incalculable cost to other creatures and to ourselves. If we state the problem that way, then we can see that the way to correct our error, and so deliver ourselves from our own destructiveness, is to quit using our technological capability as the reference point and standard of our economic life. We will instead have to measure our economy by the health of the ecosystems and human communities where we do our work.
It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.
As Paul Graham writes at the end of his essay “The Acceleration of Addictiveness”
We'll increasingly be defined by what we say no to.
We must clearly see the choices in front of us. Then we must decide when to say no.
Favorite Reads This Week
Here are a few of my favorite things from this past week:
This interview with
from is just fantastic. Give it a read!
Another post from
that came across my Twitter feed inspired by ’s great interview on ’s podcast in August of 2021.The latest from
where he shares about his renewed practice as a drummer and how it’s helped him reflect on ideas of genius and expertise.
The Book Nook
I keep coming back to
’s book Alone Together as we continue to explore new frontiers with our devices. While Turkle, writing in 2011, is mostly focused on the first wave of the influence of the smartphone, she picks up on many of the trends that continue to drive the technology being developed today.The Professor Is In
I shared last week that my Clinic team was the first on the docket to present this semester. They gave their talk this past Tuesday and did a great job. Super proud of the work that they’ve put into the project thus far and the great work they did on building and polishing a stellar presentation.
Leisure Line
Tried another new cookie recipe this week. Just for reference, those are full 10.5” dinner plates! NYT gift recipe link here in case you’re interested in giving them a shot yourself.
Spoiler alert: the recipe calls for you to bang the pan down to get those ripples—super fun!
Still Life
A beautiful sunset on the way home from work last week.
Nice post. I particularly appreciate your reminding people of Turkle’s Alone Together, although I would say that the smart phone component – the second half of the book – is less interesting than the first half, which talks about computers as social actors, what we consider “alive,” and whether robotic social replacements are considered not so much good, but “good enough.” I keep returning to her insights and research and examples more than a decade later— and to the comment of the child considering whether there should be a robotic caregiver for the elderly, “don’t we have people for these jobs?”
Quite relevant to the current moment.
Thank you bringing Wendell Berry to my attention! I’d like to think my newly launched substack explores themes similar to yours.