Apple's new virtual reality headset, the Apple Vision Pro, is a bit different than the original iPad Pro, and I think it's a good one. It's a bit like a Walt Disney or Walt Disney, in that it's designed to be a distraction from the real world.
00:00:00.000Hi everyone, this is Richard and welcome back to my journal.
00:00:04.300I'm going to react a bit to the release of the Apple Vision Pro.
00:00:12.960Don't worry, this sub-stack has not become a tech enthusiast sub-stack.
00:00:19.360I'm not rebranding, nor will I be unboxing anything.
00:00:23.700I'm only reacting to this for three reasons, I guess.
00:00:29.100First off, I'm in middle age and I have been a bit of an Apple enthusiast for my entire life.
00:00:37.520So there is a personal aspect to this.
00:00:41.420Secondly, I do think this is culturally significant.
00:00:46.180And so I will react to the product itself, but I want to talk about what it means for us as a society.
00:00:51.980And thirdly, I guess, for philosophical reasons, I think we have been, as a civilization, questing for the metaverse since Book 10 of Plato's Republic.
00:01:09.800First off, let me just react to this on a surface level.
00:01:15.720I first talked about the notion of an Apple headset around a month ago, I think.
00:01:24.900And we talked about it on one of our members-only calls, and I actually posted my monologue on it publicly.
00:01:34.620So you can go visit that, and I'll link it in the description, of course.
00:01:40.180I was very down on this notion of an Apple headset.
00:01:49.720I haven't re-listened to what I said, and maybe I was a little more balanced or fair.
00:01:56.940But I was basically saying that this was going to be a complete disaster.
00:02:02.740At the very least, you could say that they're diminishing returns, really, with these Apple products and in terms of changing the world and changing society.
00:02:15.800So obviously, the Apple II did change society.
00:02:23.900I mean, and Steve Jobs stealing, you know, it's what great artists do, stealing from the Xerox Corporation Research and Development Group,
00:02:34.020and arriving at this notion of a user interface that's graphical, that is intuitive and fun, that's using a mouse and clicks and all those things.
00:02:49.620And everything that we take for granted now in terms of a computer and thus in terms of everything we do in our daily lives does derive from that on some level,
00:03:01.360even if it was all stolen and not quite invented by Steve Jobs.
00:03:07.080Steve Jobs is more of a showman than a technologist.
00:03:13.640And I'm certainly not the only one to say that.
00:03:16.200He probably has more in common with Barnum or something.
00:03:21.040I actually think probably the best analog with Steve Jobs is Walt Disney.
00:03:25.500And Steve Jobs, like Walt Disney, was a deeply American type, but also someone who was offering a kind of escape.
00:03:38.740Someone who would use technology, but use it for humanist ends, you could say.
00:04:08.140It's not so much a fantasy of technology itself.
00:04:13.920Even though Apple products will often, not always, but often be best in class and they'll brag about speed and hard drive size and Moore's Law and all that kind of stuff.
00:04:30.380And it's very similar with Walt Disney.
00:04:32.280He also was a technological innovator.
00:04:36.860But it was always technology as a means.
00:04:39.600You know, in the iPhone announcement presentation, Steve Jobs said that we're at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts.
00:04:49.080And he actually showed an image of a street signs of liberal arts and technology.
00:04:54.020So it was a kind of merging of the technology sphere, which can be scary and dehumanizing and frustrating and maybe even dystopian at its worst.
00:05:08.060And humanism in the sense of it just works.
00:05:15.200It kind of looks like something out of, I don't know, Star Wars or something like this.
00:05:20.880And you can see that with this new product, the Vision Pro, the weaving and the little accents of orange and things like that.
00:05:31.420It does look very Star Wars-y, in fact.
00:05:34.560But it's this minimalist, sleek, futuristic, but also approachable design that is associated with Jonathan Ive, Johnny Ive, who I don't think works at Apple any longer, but was a major figure there in terms of design.
00:05:55.680The idea that you design the computer as an aesthetic object, that you wouldn't just create this cheaper and cheaper plastic box that is purely utilitarian, but you design something that would be beautiful, that you'd want to be seen using.
00:06:11.440That the iMac in your home would kind of have a special place, that you'd want to be seen working on a Apple Airbook or a MacBook Air at a coffee shop, that that says something about yourself.
00:06:28.400It says that you're productive and you're creative.
00:06:33.380And, of course, it says that you maybe have a little disposable income.
00:06:36.420It says all those things, whereas the goofy utilitarian corporate shill is there slamming on his plastic ThinkPad doing Excel spreadsheets and, you know, eking out profit.
00:06:54.820The person using a Mac is creative and changing the world or innovating or maybe crafting the perfect home movie, capturing those moments.
00:07:05.760You saw a lot of that in the Vision Pro demonstration.
00:07:11.460So what I reacted to with the very thought of the Vision Pro was that this is very much going against all that.
00:07:26.320Yeah, you can make a set of goggles fairly aesthetic, but at the end of the day, you're closed off from the world.
00:07:35.180And, in fact, you look like a huge dork using them.
00:07:38.820There's kind of even as brilliantly as these goggles were designed, you still can't get away from the dork factor.
00:07:47.340And, in fact, you're carrying along a battery pack in your pocket.
00:07:51.440I mean, there's a lot of hurdles to overcome, not in terms of your experience of it, but in terms of people's experience of you.
00:08:01.100So it seemed to really go against Apple's philosophy, which I think is something that's kind of unspoken on some level, but on another level, something they wear on their sleeve.
00:08:13.240In other words, it's cool to use this thing.
00:08:16.020Are you really going to produce a product that's just inherently dorky?
00:08:27.700I still cannot imagine wearing one, even if it has Apple's logo on it.
00:08:35.360So there was this kind of like going against Apple's vibe.
00:08:40.320It was you look like a dork wearing them.
00:08:45.160You're in a kind of you're trapped in a virtual reality space and you're not living in the real world.
00:08:54.860There was at least some reporting on people in Cupertino that were quite skeptical of all this.
00:09:02.740And they were kind of they're saying things that I think, you know, us normal people are also saying, which is that, you know, isn't this isn't this going against what we're all about?
00:09:13.480Isn't this almost quasi evil in a way?
00:09:17.980We're trapping people in a digital space, whereas we should be doing things that help people live in the real world or even in an analog space.
00:09:29.160That is something that helps them be more creative or helps them even bond with their children and or so on through, you know, home movies have long been a big fixture with Apple.
00:11:23.260And so there's some interesting things about these goggles where, for instance, if someone enters the room, you know, these goggles are covered in cameras.
00:11:32.600So if someone enters the room and you look at them, or at least you're pointed in their direction, you're not actually looking at them, the face or the face mask, if that's the right word, of the goggles are a screen.
00:11:50.160And they will actually show a representation of your eyes.
00:11:53.140And it looks as if you're seeing through the goggles and seeing their face.
00:11:57.300And, you know, of course, the way that we communicate is 90% nonverbal.
00:12:05.480So much of communication is eye contact, a smile in your eye, a raised eyebrow, a hand gesture.
00:12:15.500And so Apple has thought through this.
00:12:18.660They don't want to trap you in the digital space, but you can actually interact in the world.
00:12:24.940There's actually an image in this presentation of a man working while wearing the goggles.
00:12:30.180So he's walking around his workspace and, you know, getting a paper handed to him or something like that.
00:12:38.480And when he's looking at that person, a representation of his eyes.
00:12:42.220So we have, it's funny, I guess, in the sense that you're offering a digital representation of a transparent goggle, as opposed to just having a transparent goggle.
00:12:57.360But whatever, they have at least addressed this.
00:13:01.960The other thing that I could say about it that is two things.
00:13:05.760One of the first is that I can say about it that's actually good is that, I mean, to compare the introduction of Apple Vision Pro to the Facebook metaverse is to compare apples and oranges or it's to compare the New York Yankees to a semi-pro beer league.
00:14:02.040So it is a purely digital realm in which you interact with people as avatars, and you can create weird avatars like being a robot or whatever.
00:14:12.480And as many people noted, a lot of these avatars looked something out of 1998 or something.
00:14:33.860Now, there is a real trend towards that.
00:14:35.960There are memojis on Apple messages, Snapchat, horrible social networking app, should be banned with TikTok.
00:14:44.600But anyway, it has your profile as basically a memoji, a kind of idealized, cutesy cartoon version of yourself that is becoming your identity.
00:15:31.260You could read a website, read the newspaper.
00:15:34.640You could work on Adobe Photoshop in one end.
00:15:40.240So it's a kind of what they call this 3D spatial computing.
00:15:43.180Now, yeah, there are some kind of like 3D models that you could look at in 3D.
00:15:49.120But this spatial computing is, at the end of the day, still 2D computing.
00:15:54.780So you're looking at, in an augmented virtual reality realm that looks like the real world, you're looking at a two-dimensional space.
00:16:05.840So, you know, I don't know whether you find that like a compelling kind of like response or a compelling happy compromise or whether you look at that as almost redundant.
00:16:20.860I mean, on some level, you can almost imagine like putting on these goggles and then looking at a three-dimensional representation of your own laptop that you're typing on.
00:16:33.780I mean, at some point, it is both more familiar and thus something that I think is more attractive.
00:16:41.740But then there is a kind of redundancy and why quality to it all.
00:16:47.960Now, one place where it succeeds is in the realm of movies.
00:16:56.140But even here, I think there are some criticism that should be leveled.
00:17:00.660So, yeah, I could definitely imagine being on a plane for eight hours and just wanting to escape the humdrum of it all and the annoying person sitting next to me and just put on these goggles and, you know, watch my favorite movie and just be totally absorbed in it.
00:17:21.160It would just be right in front of your face, amazing stuff.
00:18:44.700There's no way that these things can really interact together.
00:18:51.100So, you know, there's a big difference between, say, you know, sitting down on the couch with your girlfriend and watching Succession or something, Game of Thrones, and you're there communally, you're talking about it, you're both kind of reacting to it at the same time, or watching a, you know, Indiana Jones with your kids or something.
00:19:31.340This is, granted, immersive, maybe it's cool, maybe it's extremely convenient on an airplane, but it's just so solipsistic that I think there is a dystopian quality to it.
00:19:42.960And as I mentioned, this is just, you know, it was on everyone's mind, even though it wasn't mentioned.
00:19:48.740This is just begging to be used for extreme hardcore pornography, which will end up ending the human race through lack of reproduction.
00:21:06.180But it's really Plato's masterwork, and it contains almost all of his philosophy in this one political manifesto, you could say,
00:21:20.680about the best possible form of government and society.
00:21:25.240And there's a tremendous amount there.
00:21:28.840One of the themes is this notion of mimesis or imitation.
00:21:37.280And Plato takes some interesting perspectives on this.
00:21:44.000In Book 10, he lays it out pretty clearly.
00:21:49.180He says that, you know, any carpenter can make a couch.
00:21:56.860But when he makes this couch, and these can be couches of various different kinds and various different fabrics or sizes or dimensions, etc.
00:22:08.940But they're based on this, as it were, metaphysical idea of a couch.
00:22:16.100So they are, in their way, a kind of copy of a couch.
00:22:22.100And Plato extends that, or Socrates, I guess, in this case, who's speaking, extends that line of reasoning and says that when an artist holds a mirror up to nature or depicts humanity or, say, paints on a set in a theatrical production, paints a couch,
00:22:47.120that he's doing an imitation of an imitation of an imitation, so Plato, in this way, has a very cynical, or maybe cynical is not the right word, a low view of the artistic process.
00:23:05.600Hamlet will say to hold a mirror up to nature is a great thing that can be done through art.
00:23:11.400Plato sees this as a Xerox copy of a Xerox copy, and so it's becoming blurry, and you're getting away from the real truth of the matter.
00:23:22.640Plato, of course, wants art to be didactic in this sense, that it should have a purpose of teaching, at the very least, good behavior, but maybe even teaching truth.
00:23:36.480And in that sense, bad art should definitely be censored.
00:23:40.700Plato is by no means a free speech advocate or libertarian.
00:23:48.360And you can look at all this and say this is the blueprint for a totalitarian society, as many people have done, Karl Popper most famously.
00:23:57.200But what I'm stressing on is that idea of art being a kind of diminished thing in the sense that it's a copy of a copy.
00:24:06.700It's not even a representation of the real.
00:24:10.100It's a representation of a representation.
00:24:13.840And in a way, the carpenter who makes a couch, who's copying the ideal of a couch, is higher in Plato's mind.
00:24:22.740And so I think there's been this tendency since Plato, I mean, all philosophy since Plato is merely footnotes, to try to access that real, that the real thing, the ideal realm.
00:24:40.780Maybe we can imagine it's out there, we can imagine it's divine, but it is the realm of truth beyond the realm of mere representation.
00:24:55.680And I think there's something, I sense something like that is going on in this quest for the metaverse that is a purely digital realm.
00:25:08.760And I'm not saying that Mark Zuckerberg is a Platonist exactly, in the sense that he's read Plato or he's inspired by Plato.