Augmented reality will exacerbate our unhealthy relationship with technology

Augmented reality is the only thing I am excited for, more so than virtual reality is right now (and I say that as someone who has a couple of VR headsets around the house, the Reverb G2 and Valve Index). To me, VR will always be relegated to gaming and solo interactive experiences, augmented reality has already proven itself in fields such as medical and training purposes. Microsoft Hololens has been widely successful in the avenues they have pursued and deployed in, going as far back as 2016. I know some plants are using them for maintenance, if I recall elevator techs using them to repair elevators more efficiently, vehicle mechanics and more.<p>The positives outweigh the negatives and it is sad to see the article only focuses on the downsides. Find me a technology that doesn&#x27;t have a negative?

Between my hobbies and sports, something that has been driven home for me over the last 5-10 years is that there is <i>so much</i> going on around us that we never see.<p>If we use AR to <i>see</i> things that are already there, that will be one thing. But odds are that we will instead use it to see things that aren&#x27;t there.

Hyper-Reality shows what the AR could become in the most dystopian way: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs</a>

Pokemon Go is fully 5 years old. It&#x27;s AR feature was a decent gimmick but pretty basic and a bit buggy. In the subsequent 5 years there&#x27;s been nothing to equal it. I won&#x27;t say AR is &quot;dead&quot; but it seems unlikely to reach mainstream adoption any time soon.

This article goes on a rant about AR and how it will be used for more spying, emotional manipulation, etc that social media has perpetrated. Then defends VR as somehow shielded from these things:<p>&quot;Most of us don’t have a healthy relationship with technology, and AR as currently thought of, will just exacerbate that. It’s why I really like VR more than AR, because VR is a separate world that you consciously decide to be in for a time.&quot;<p>And yet the author fails to mention that a good chunk of the VR market is dominated by Facebook, one of the very companies doing the things he railed against. Already they force Facebook login with Oculus. So much for your imagined separation of virtual and real life.

VR will be terrible because, yes, people will be manipulated through virtual realities made up for them to achieve different things. Some options will undoubtedly be good (learning and so on), Others will be worse than any FaceBook bubble + gaming&#x2F;gambling + video games combined could ever be. Imagine the &quot;re-educational&quot; possibilities here for a sec.<p>You get to plug in to any reality you want or someone wants for you and you get manipulated through these realities and you no longer live in actual reality but live in a virtual one fabricated for you and people like you and you get manipulated any which way the powers that be want you to be. Gamification will be rampant and will absorb people in to it. They will have little need for actual reality, be it relationships or much else.

I always figured AR would be a replacement for my monitor(s) allowing cool new applications with space and wouldn&#x27;t leave my workspace. Obviously, there are lots of applications when walking around, but not a whole lot I&#x27;d want (given that they can&#x27;t come up with much that isn&#x27;t Apple Watch&#x2F;iPhone strapped to face). Maybe I&#x27;ll never get my dream of carrying a pair of goggles in my backpack that can let me spread out my work beyond the laptop screen in a hotel room or on a plane.

For my part I don&#x27;t really care about &quot;AR&quot; as it actually applies to augmenting reality, and in fact I&#x27;m pretty sure that if I got such a device I&#x27;d have most of the functionality like that turned off, the same way I have most location-aware app functionality disabled on my phone and most notifications turned off on my smartwatch. I just like the idea of having a screen in my glasses that can replace carrying around a Kindle &#x2F; iPad for reading and other light media consumption.

Seems like this takes a very narrow view of AR and just focuses on every possible negative aspect and for every possible branch only considers the worst case scenario.<p>Poor quality article.<p>AR is merely a tool, how we as individuals chose to use it will define what impact is has on each of our lives.

&gt; We didn&#x27;t evolve for this.<p>No, we evolved to jump sharks. Just like that straying into purpose-driven evolution and just so stories did. Motivated reasoning.<p>He had me until then, though.

other people&#x27;s augmented realities will be awful. an augmented reality we can holistically build our of pieces ourselves will be at fantastic deep frontier where countless people can define &amp; shape themselves &amp; their views.<p>good of luck escaping out into a real metaverse, planet earth. few large participants on your planet will shoot for that greater good.

AR as we&#x27;re currently thinking about it will be a nightmare.

Augmented reality will never exist. So lucky<p>Even in the movies all they can come up with is ads.<p>Anything useful it might be able to do makes the task redundant.<p>It can tell you how to put together your IKEA furniture, then it could tell a robot what to do.