Apple's Vision Pro Is A Symptom Of Disintegrated Community Life
This virtual reality headset is not worth celebrating. It is all there is left to do.
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A few weeks ago, Apple began selling its inaugural virtual reality (VR) headset, the Vision Pro. Heralded as a leap in digital technology, the device was instantly supported by enthusiastic reviews. Behind this product is a simple idea: when a screen is strapped directly in front of one's eyeballs, endless opportunities for diversion arise.
Apple would like us to cough up $3,500 to experience the complete filtration of everything we see through the lens of the 2nd largest company on Earth.
So far, few people have bothered to ask if screens strapped to our faces would accomplish anything meaningful. What are the potential harms? What are the proposed benefits? Will this technology catalyze authentic relationships, personal growth, intellectual curiosity, or meaningful work? Would it bring about a world with more peace and justice?
Technology “critics” do not find such questions worth asking. But neither does the lay public. Somehow, the rizz of new technology converts even the most critical thinkers into industry cheerleaders. The cultural consensus seems to be that the digital revolution will inevitably improve upon our mundane existence.
But it is also an economic consensus. Seven of the world’s ten largest companies are American tech firms. These companies bring in loads of money. But also, investors believe they will dominate the global economy for decades to come.
For Silicon Valley to maintain cultural and economic dominance, consumers must believe the following:
To possess a satisfactory degree of freedom, status, and pleasure, we must pay hand over fist–with time and money–for the latest technology.
To achieve self-actualization, we must forsake the real in exchange for the virtual.
To ameliorate ill feelings about technology, we must assume that further innovation will outpace the problems it has created.
Under such a belief system, Silicon Valley traps us in a suspension of optimism and disillusionment. We await technological rapture to resolve our greatest frustrations and to provide us with unthinkable pleasure.
It is impressive that Apple has amassed so much power while maintaining a pristine public image. At least a fraction of Apple’s success may be attributed to effective marketing. In the days before the launch of the first Macintosh computer, Apple aired a single Super Bowl advertisement.
The ad portrays a world where masses of people internalize every word of a dictatorial figure. Without even displaying a product, the ad invokes George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984:
Under this guise of bringing utopia to Earth, Silicon Valley has grown and embedded itself in power. Slajov Žižek says in his book, Heaven in Disorder, that tech companies build power by colonizing and monopolizing the “commons”. Amazon’s profitable Web Services are the indomitable backbone of the internet. Google and Facebook dominate internet advertising. Google dominates the internet search function.
Apple, of course, produces iPhones, iPads, and iPods. However, the company buttresses its status by forcing all software to be downloaded from its own App Store. By establishing itself as the sole distributor of apps, Apple can charge an exorbitant 30% tax for every app purchase. An analytic firm projects the App Store alone will bring in $108 billion of revenue in 2024.
To accelerate growth, the giants of Silicon Valley must invent new technological realms to claim and control—ideally in places where they can absorb our attention. As Žižek puts it, they must “colonize our future”.
Looking back at Apple’s product history, we see that the Vision Pro is the next logical step in the company’s expansion.
The Macintosh brought computers into people’s homes, to be used wherever people live or work.
The iPod and iPhone placed computers in people’s hands, able to be carried anywhere.
The Apple Watch eliminates the need to take a device out of one’s pocket.
The Vision Pro allows Apple Products to be used constantly, no hands needed.
Apple is not alone in the virtual reality arms race. Facebook began selling VR headsets before Apple. Mark Zuckerberg's conviction in the technology was so strong he changed his company’s name from Facebook to Meta. By 2022, Mark Zuckerberg spent over $50 billion developing his immersive “metaverse” technology.
But the company’s revenues stagnated and Meta’s stock declined 27%. To appease disgruntled investors, Zuckerberg laid off over 20,000 employees. Many thought Zuckerberg’s enthusiasm for VR was a miscalculation.
But with Apple's Vision Pro, virtual reality has acquired renewed interest from investors, app developers, and the public. Perhaps Zuckerberg’s enthusiasm wasn’t wrong, just premature.
Maybe we are destined to have our faces suctioned to these devices.
More than Silicon Valley’s drive to become masters of the universe, I worry about the unwavering acceptance of this technology. While the Vision Pro is expensive, the greater cost is the implied forfeiture of relationships with real people and real things. The same tradeoff was noted by Wendell Berry and his provocative 1987 essay, “Why I Am not Going To Buy A Computer”. The entire essay is as relevant today as it was then. He enumerates nine criteria a new technology must meet before considering its adoption. He takes issue with technology that is expensive, difficult to repair, unable to be produced or fixed locally, and powered by non-renewable energy. His 9th criterion is especially worth pausing to contemplate:
It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.
Wendell Berry was recommended a computer to improve his writing. But he worried the technology would create a schism between himself and his wife. At the time, Wendell Berry handwrote his work, which was then typed by his wife on a typewriter. Computer advocates criticized this approach as antiquated and a waste of time. Misunderstood is that Wendell Berry’s wife was not just a typist, but a valued editor and critic, a role that would be diminished by a computer.
Never before in human history have humans required computers to create great works of writing. Wendell Berry was not convinced that anything coming out of Silicon Valley would improve upon the craft:
I do not see why I should not be as scientific about this as the next fellow: when somebody has used a computer to write work that is demonstrably better than Dante's, and when this better is demonstrably attributable to the use of a computer, then I will speak of computers with a more respectful tone of voice, though I still will not buy one.
To a comedic degree, Wendell Berry’s words received fierce backlash. But he stood his ground.
To be clear, his writing is not limited to technological deviance. The deeper origin of his writing and philosophy is his fidelity to family and community in Henry County, Kentucky. He lives a life integrated with the land, nature, and people in his immediate surroundings. This commitment inspired a lifetime of brilliant writing. Had Wendell Berry conceded to the recommendations of experts, he may have become a hurried computer-owning English professor in New York, writing works of abstraction rather than those rooted in the lived experience.
While Wendell Berry’s commitment to place is admirable and informative, the rest of Henry County has followed the common trajectory of rural America. Small family farms are less common. Wendell Berry says himself that some homes seem occupied, but appear to be weekend getaways “where people come to sleep and watch TV”.
A vicious cycle is upon us. Society is seduced by the capacity of screens to provide easy access to entertainment, relationships, and information. With the ubiquity of screens, we have eroded neighborliness, kinship, and family ties. It has now come to the point where it seems more is happening online than in real life. So Silicon Valley has lunged at the opportunity to pull us deeper into the rabbit hole.
I aspire to live a more analog life. But I find myself using a computer and smartphone nevertheless. The Vision Pro is not a device I would ever consider using. But it is certainly a wake-up call. We must consciously define the parameters that we will allow technology to enter our lives. Otherwise, this decision will be made for us at the expense of more than we thought possible.
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Good job, Will!