“That’s the future we’re driving towards — with everyone in the floating chairs, drinking their food out of straws, and constant 24/7 entertainment.”
VR Dystopia
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey isn’t very optimistic about our near future.
In a recent interview with YouTube news channel Breaking Points, Dorsey said that he’s worried we’ll all turn into the blobby people being carted around on hovering recliners, a dystopian vision depicted in the Pixar animation classic “WALL-E.”
“That’s the future we’re driving towards — with everyone in the floating chairs, drinking their food out of straws, and constant 24/7 entertainment,” he told the channel.
Dorsey made the remarks after being asked about Apple’s recently announced Vision Pro headset, a ski goggles-like headset that will cost $3,499 when it goes on sale sometime next year.
“You can see that like the whole world is headed this way and I want to believe that there’s a different answer,” he said, arguing that we should have an “honest conversation” about the harms of “too much technology.”
UI, Robot
Dorsey’s comments are particularly interesting given how Apple chose to show off its Vision Pro headset during an announcement last week. In its marketing materials, the company showed people wearing the headset often sitting by themselves, a far cry from how Apple’s competitors have chosen to showcase the social component of their hardware.
In fact, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who’s hugely invested in the idea himself, took aim at Apple days after the announcement, telling employees during a rare companywide meeting that it’s a “vision of the future of computing,” which is “not the one I want.”
Apple also notably didn’t focus its showcase on gaming, something that must’ve come to Dorsey’s surprise.
“I think they have the propensity to be phenomenal for gaming,” Dorsey told Breaking Points. “I think it’s an obvious user interface evolution.”
Virtual Blight
On the other hand, Dorsey also admitted that he’s “super-worried and concerned with how out-of-touch it might make people — and how it distances us even further.”
While he’s hoping that “we have an honest conversation about some of the harms around more and more social distancing,” Dorsey is still bullish on the idea.
“I mean it’s obvious that it’s going to happen,” Dorsey said, referring to companies pushing AR and VR tech.
As for how it will all play out, the former Twitter CEO said that we should “just read science fiction” like “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson or Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” since “they’re actually the roadmap writers.”
More on the Vision Pro: Apple’s New AR Headset Scans Your Eyeballs to Unlock