That's exactly it, they're products we don't -need-. If you already have a smartphone, that's good enough. This is the same problem that plagues the AI assistant devices - it doesn't matter what they can do, they won't replace your smartphone. Which means you're asking someone to carry (and pay for) a smartphone + an extra device. That's a big ask.
It's also the reason why you see these stories of people living smartphone-only lives, doing everything on their smartphones without needing or even having a desktop/laptop. Smartphones are good enough for everything, for a lot of people.
For the record: I -love- the Vision Pro. Tried it out, loved it. But I fall into the `Tech nerds like it because it's "cool"` part. I recognize that that's not going to be the popular opinion. Not now, not ever. There's just not enough value in VR/AR to really change societal norms to the point that everyone's going to want to wear these devices.
Ultimately: Just because a product is a cool idea, doesn't mean it's society-altering. Some products just aren't that valuable.
> If you already have a smartphone, that's good enough.
Sure, but I don't think nearly enough people are sufficiently critical of their need for a smartphone either; I tend to think of it like cars, we've just allowed ourselves to let these devices service so much our day-to-day tasks that they seem like necessary appendages. If it goes away, we panic and buy another one, never stopping to sit with that absence. If my mac had a built-in cellular modem, I'd leave the phone at home most days. It's not useless, but it is completely incidental to my life in terms of what I actually would need it for. Likewise, if people didn't have cars, they wouldn't likely have a life that's only palatable because they have one.
> If my mac had a built-in cellular modem, I'd leave the phone at home most days.
I can’t imagine having to open my wallet every time I want to pay for something. Apple Pay is my favorite feature out of all. Instant communication comes close second. The way we used to live… not being able to ask your partner if we have enough milk in the fridge.
But.. none of that does or should require a smart phone really. Even for the cellular modem bit I mentioned, I could find another way to do it; people had devices for this before these black mirrors came around. But a cellular modem built into my laptop would reduce the amount of crap I have instead of add to it, and I'd still use the smart phone for other reasons at other times, just not if I'm going to a cafe to work necessarily. Using technological conveniences with more intentionality instead of chronically is where I think we screw ourselves.
With the car comparison, my hunch is that a not insignificant contingent of car owning bi-pedal able-bodied people fit into the category of both not having any athletic pastimes/hobbies and also walk or move their body to get somewhere for less than 30 min a week. Just a hunch though. To do that without having had the influence of a car at some point would be remarkable; you'd have to be exceptionally sedentary, live immediately adjacent to a transit stop and do everything in your life right next to another.
If I took the cost of a car and put that into anything else in my life, it's the difference between hypothetically having access to the most expensive outdoor hobbies that don't directly depend on cars themselves, like rally. Not to shit on cars as hobbies either though, not requiring a car means I could afford to have a project car just for the hell of it.
Without an Apple Watch, I just.. tap my card, and retain 2 month's worth of food budget because I didn't get the damn thing.
> But.. none of that does or should require a smart phone really
Well yes, it doesn’t. I used to ask people for directions without a world map, not understand the street signs in a foreign county, come how to a spouse telling me go buy milk since we’re out of it.
Most of technological advances in the last 30 years are conveniences. You could argue ad absurdum since you don’t need most of technology to survive.
Like, you don’t need a laptop if you think about it. You could just do all your work in the office.
But it's not ad absurdum, it's a degree of visceral discomfort for tolerating either the most shallow of discomforts, or the least shallow such as experiencing the vulnerability of navigating a culture without knowing exactly where you are at all times.
A laptop is just a marginally different tech choice according to whether I like a bit of variety in my office setting. I don't have a printer or scanner at home, I walk down to the library, but if I no use for laptop over a desktop I'd pick that, which I do for my gaming pc. If I couldn't pick a laptop, that one could argue I've adapted to having, I'd just adapt to not, it's not a big deal.
To be fair, when you say "we've allowed cars to become necessary," you're talking about "we" as a society allowing that to happen-- me ditching my car after it breaks down tomorrow wouldn't be feasible unless I'm also willing to move to a much different part of my metro, get a new job, and find all-new hobbies and friend groups. That's not a decision most individuals have the power to make because they feel like trying it.
On the other hand, as you point out, a lot of what phones can do can also be done with larger computers. Most workplaces don't require employees to use their personal cell phones on a daily basis. It's practically a fad to "disconnect" for a while, and most individuals would be able to get by while doing that, especially if they still have a working computer.
Looking at this from a contradicting angle, cars actually have safety, environmental, and logistical concerns that make society's dependence on them a physically questionable idea. When I visited Japan for three weeks earlier this year and took public transportation everywhere, I was still using Google Maps on my cell phone to get just about everywhere, just like I do here at home in the US when I'm driving. So I think the "need" for a smartphone for navigation actually eclipses the societal need for cars to move people around.
So I don't think the comparison you're making holds up very deeply, other than on a very abstract societal level. Smartphones have a much wider array of possible usages than cars, and cars have a much more individually critical role in peoples' lives than cell phones.
> To be fair, when you say "we've allowed cars to become necessary," you're talking about "we" as a society allowing that to happen-- me ditching my car after it breaks down tomorrow wouldn't be feasible unless I'm also willing to move to a much different part of my metro, get a new job, and find all-new hobbies and friend groups. That's not a decision most individuals have the power to make because they feel like trying it.
What you describe here is exactly what I was thinking about; individuals in various societies that have either personally or consequently let so many facets of their life depend exclusively on the presence of the car that it feels like it would all come crumbling down in its absence. If we don't have the car, we'll literally lose our social circles, our hobbies, our job!? One would have to be crazy. Prior to me being more or less forced into that situation, I felt the same way, but it turned out that nothing like that happened at all, I'm saving money, I have closer relationships than ever with the people that matter and more of them, I conserve money more easily, I'm in better shape, and I literally never think about driving. The only downside is that some leisure activities take a bit more forethought, and it would be more difficult to have a job that's truly in random far-flung, unpredictable locations. When I was forced to sit with it, I did refuse to live in the city that didn't help me do that. Any friends that I had then and don't now turned out to either not be friends at all, or people I just see every once in a while when I rent a car and drive 8 hours to see them. At no time since getting rid of it has the thought of getting another one seemed appealing enough to pay even the tax on a low budget used car.
But to your analogous point, would I feel the same if I totally ditched the phone? I think ya probably, there's a decent chance of it.
> When I visited Japan for three weeks earlier this year and took public transportation everywhere, I was still using Google Maps on my cell phone to get just about everywhere, just like I do here at home in the US when I'm driving. So I think the "need" for a smartphone for navigation actually eclipses the societal need for cars to move people around.
Do you not feel like the only reason you do that is because it's what you've conditioned yourself to do? I also visited Japan for about the same length of stay for the first time last year, with my partner. While we did use maps somewhat, we only used it at the hostel for the first few days to get a vague sense of direction, and then used it only in the capacity that I would a static paper map or series of them, only in extremely rare travel circumstances have I ever purchased some temporary sim card or services, it's only rarely necessary and wildly detracts from my sense of adventure. Likewise, Tokyo is comically easy to navigate, it took a few days to get the hang of it and then I was good. Translation was pretty helpful (offline) but if I didn't have it I would have figured it out or bought a translation device. The amount of time I saved was incredible, and no I'm not being hyperbolic. If you frame it differently, would you not visit Japan if you didn't have a smartphone? Why?
Mapping apps are no-doubt super useful, but you don't need directions to everywhere you need to go, it's a convenience that we come to rely on, and I never use it day to day unless I'm comparing transit time to biking. Routes aren't that unpredictable most of the time, and there's signage, if my phone dies I'm not suddenly helpless, and that seems important.
Fwiw, I didn't read your comment as combative and I don't at all mean to be here, I just don't think we reconsider these things enough and let ourselves get too comfy with the conveniences of them, to such an extent that we no longer feel comfortable navigating the world, asking people for directions, talking to people on the street, making new friends, or diversifying our leisure. It's scary.
> and it would be more difficult to have a job that's truly in random far-flung, unpredictable locations. When I was forced to sit with it, I did refuse to live in the city that didn't help me do that.
I have a job that's a 30-minute drive from where I live (or a 7 hour walk, or a questionable 2 hour bike ride). My workplace is in a terrible part of town, and there's no way I'd live in the one (1) apartment complex within walking distance of it. Nobody takes public transportation to my workplace because no public transportation stops are within walking distance of it. On the other hand, I work at this company because I want to; I moved to this city to work at this company.
You're essentially saying people should just not care about where they work or where they live, and/or you're projecting your own privilege of being able to live and work wherever you want to onto everyone else.
> Do you not feel like the only reason you do that is because it's what you've conditioned yourself to do?
No, I did it because it was a foreign country that speaks a language I'm still not great at, and I didn't have any clue where anything was before I got there. I'm glad you and your partner had no actual schedule and had the luxury of just being able to bumble around wherever, whenever in order to fulfill whatever it is you think you got out of your trip.
I did not feel like taking hours in advance to look up and write down the same information that would've been needed to navigate the plethora of train and bus stops to go the places I wanted to go (which would then be rendered useless if I made a wrong turn en-route), or to be stuck within the immediate vicinity of my lodging in the various cities and towns where I stayed.
My earlier comment was not combative, but you're really coming off as a "just roll with it, maaaaan" hippy, which is not applicable to most people and not useful to discuss at a societal level. Do I wish normal people were more social and less tech-reliant? Sure. Me ditching my phone or throwing my career away to avoid driving is not going to fix the world, though. No functioning individual can or should be expected to do that.
(And for all your response, I don't think you strengthened your original case of comparing reliance on smartphones to reliance on cars, which is specifically what I objected to.)
Disagree, I’ve been coordinating a lot of things lately–house projects, social events, travel, healthcare, work, etc etc–and have basically had a phone glued to my hand, which means i’m one hand down and constantly cranking my neck. if i could go hands free and be able to mind tasks, even menial ones like laundry and cooking, while researching things online, going through phone menus, messaging with people etc, it would really help. i think we are getting really close to that capability with chatgpt voice mode, we just need a piece of hardware that can bridge the gap.
> they're products we don't -need-. If you already have a smartphone, that's good enough.
I disagree.
If LinkedIn made AR glasses that told me who the person is I’m looking at (that I’m connected to on LinkedIn) and why/how we were connected, I’d buy that in a heartbeat.
> If LinkedIn made AR glasses that told me who the person is I’m looking at (that I’m connected to on LinkedIn) and why/how we were connected, I’d buy that in a heartbeat.
The idea of wearing LinkedIn on my face makes my stomach churn, but while that's my personal reaction, is there a real world context you've found yourself in regularly enough that you've found yourself wanting such a product, or is it more like a conference thing? I can't even think of a physical space I've been in, ever, where there would be even one person that I'm both connected to on LinkedIn and don't know why.
Happens to me all the time. The company I work for has 1300 employees, and what I do means going cross-team pretty often, talking to people that I might have met once or twice a year ago. I speak to customer teams that pack consultants I might have worked with 10 years ago.
Generally speaking, I'm bad at remembering names. I'd buy a discreet "remind me who this is" device in a heartbeat.
Depends on what you do. But when I’m at events rather constantly (not big conferences) and people remember me, but I don’t remember them, it comes off as insulting.
VCs are a good example—founders will remember who they are for obvious reasons. But the ratio is way off—many more founders meet the same VC.
There are other industries where this happens as well.
Also, some people have problems recognizing faces in general.
> If LinkedIn made AR glasses that told me who the person is I’m looking
I could only hope that the EU would ban it ASAP if such a product existed making it unviable anywhere else. Except maybe China and such, should be pretty useful for the CCP enforcement agencies.
But there are so many things that can't be done without visual & audio context. I can't hold my smartphone camera up all day to capture and serialize useful data.
AI just made the value proposition for smartglasses 10x.
They're at the 1980s toy computer level of usefulness - fun to play with, a few useful applications, but hopelessly clumsy and underpowered in terms of real user needs.
No one was sure what real user needs would be in the 80s. It turned out the all-time killer USP was a global data network, which could be accessed through keyboard+screen terminals and pocket devices, and which replaced a lot of slow paper and phone call transactions of all kinds with near-instant access.
VR/AR is currently a wart on that. It won't come into its own until there's some equivalent new killer USP, which isn't just a different way of accessing what's there already.
I'd guess there's going to be some kind of live AI rendering of both real and simulated interactions. But it's going to have to be far beyond what we're used to today to be interesting.
That's exactly it, they're products we don't -need-. If you already have a smartphone, that's good enough. This is the same problem that plagues the AI assistant devices - it doesn't matter what they can do, they won't replace your smartphone. Which means you're asking someone to carry (and pay for) a smartphone + an extra device. That's a big ask.
It's also the reason why you see these stories of people living smartphone-only lives, doing everything on their smartphones without needing or even having a desktop/laptop. Smartphones are good enough for everything, for a lot of people.
For the record: I -love- the Vision Pro. Tried it out, loved it. But I fall into the `Tech nerds like it because it's "cool"` part. I recognize that that's not going to be the popular opinion. Not now, not ever. There's just not enough value in VR/AR to really change societal norms to the point that everyone's going to want to wear these devices.
Ultimately: Just because a product is a cool idea, doesn't mean it's society-altering. Some products just aren't that valuable.