ICYMI, Reality As We Know It Is Over

We don't need mixed reality, but can we escape it?

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Last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted his annual Meta Connect event where he launched the latest versions of Meta’s Quest headset and smart eyeglasses.

Between that event and a recent hour-long interview with the hosts of Acquired, the popular business podcast, Zuckerberg has been repeating over and over that mixed reality — of course, accessed through Meta’s products — is the future of human connection. While Meta has been working on mixed reality products for years, there’s reason to believe that they may finally be on the brink of breaking through to the mainstream public. And that’s in part because Zuckerberg isn’t trying to create niche products that will appeal to gamers or nerds, but to people who are eager to connect with others through technology.

During the Acquired interview Zuckerberg says about Meta:

We're not a social app company, we are a social connection company. We talk about what we're doing is building the future of human connection, and that's not only going to be constrained over time to what you can do on a phone, on a small screen.

The framing of Meta as a “social connection company” rather than a technology company exemplifies the kind of doublespeak that is so common in these times, particularly in a presidential election season. And the idea that social connection is right now constrained by what you can do on a phone is also absurd. (You can connect with people outside of a phone!) But it is true that Meta, whose users include one-third of humans on Earth, and whose Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp are the first-, second- and fourth-most-popular apps in the world, controls a lot of the ways people connect.

And yet, the vision for mixed reality products like Quest and Meta’s glasses is not just connection but it aims to disrupt our historic sense of reality and our understanding of what it is to be a human, in mind and body. Meta has already changed what social connection looks like — are we ready for reality as we knew it to be over?

The ultimate goal here, where mixed reality overlaps with social connection is, as Zuckerberg says “to create the next major computing platform that delivers a deep sense of presence like you are right there with another person.” In other words, his goal is to replace real, human physical presence with a computer simulation.

As I wrote last week, reviewing the data that suggests how our screen-centered, post-pandemic habits seem to be unhealthy, I don’t think that more technology is the answer — places where people can connect in real life are. Yet, I’m not running one of the largest and most successful companies in the world — whose vision is going to win here?

Who Really Wants Mixed Reality?

Meta’s Ray Bans have been a “surprise hit” according to all the media. (About 700,000 pairs have been shipped. Meta has also adopted a strong influencer strategy where they have given free pairs to influencers who, like one of the Acquired hosts, in turn promote the product to their audiences.) But the glasses have some utility — you can record videos and take photos without having to whip out a phone, and you can livestream from your glasses. In a world where there are an estimated 64 million influencer accounts on Instagram alone, you can see how these glasses might be useful for creating content.

None of these features have anything to do with mixed reality, which should be a hint for Meta, but instead they are pushing for glasses and headsets that feature holograms overlaying reality.

Meta’s vision of playing chess with a hologram in a public park — where you could also meet a real human and play in real life

At the launch event, Zuckerberg showed off the next iteration of the glasses — Orion, what he calls “the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen.” The glasses will have a “neural interface wristband” that can tap into your thoughts to control, say, a game or a hologram. Since voice-activated or hand-activated devices are just too clunky, especially in public, for Zuckerberg, he says, “I think that you need a device that allows you to just send a signal from your brain.”

Here’s a snippet about his enhanced glasses fever dream from the interview with Acquired:

It's going to be, I think, the ultimate digital social experience. I think it's also going to be the ultimate incarnation of AI, because you're going to have conversations where it's like there are some people. Maybe I'm physically here, there's a person, you're a hologram there, there's an AI that is embodied as someone is there, and the glasses will enable this.

Am I missing something — are holograms or neural interfaces on many people’s wish lists? Or is Zuckerberg creating a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist? All of this sounds really unappealing, and the only saving grace I could find is that the user experience looks so awful, I can’t imagine it’s ready for mass adoption any time soon.

Below is a screen shot from the demo of the Meta Quest where the demo guy seems to be watching a movie and has open another window. Whose idea of user experience is a bunch of competing screens overlaying a real background?

And here is Zuckerberg showing what the display looks like for someone wearing Orion glasses. Another overlay of hologram screens in a living room. Contrasting with the uncluttered simplicity that we once expected from top technology, what Zuckerberg calls “the physical world with holograms overlaid on it” is just a fundamentally junky, visually noisy experience.

All Zuck or nothing

And yet, I’m reluctant to bet against Zuckerberg. Things have changed since Zuckerberg’s first sad and bizarre metaverse outing three years ago where he showed off his creepy avatar.

Zuckerberg is shrewd and indefatigable. Meta may have lost $237 billion or 26 percent of its market cap in one day – the largest single-day loss in U.S. history — but it’s up nearly 90 percent over the past year. Zuckerberg exudes confidence at the moment, and he wants everyone to know it.

He has new tactics — namely to try to make Meta cool. He is no longer sporting the unfashionably bland style of an aloof and imperious tech bro. Instead he is cultivating an appearance that looks very similar to the influencers he is trying to influence. Just look at him with those Acquired guys, all wearing their crewneck sweaters and white sneakers to prove they’re still hip after 40!

Zuck — with his loose curls, Hawaii-weekend-house tan, gold chain, and shirts with different sayings in Latin designed by Mike Amiri — is trying to seem stylish and approachable. The Quest launch made him seem less like a calculating CEO and more like a game show host, comfortably pandering to the public, where his announcements of prices at “just $299!” felt very QVC.

But make no mistake, Zuckerberg’s plan is dominance. He told the Acquired hosts that, worst-case scenario, his smart glasses just have AI in them, not all the extra bells and whistles that Orion has. Still they will become one of the most popular products of all time.

His latest shirt, which he wore at the Quest unveiling says it all: the Latin translates into “All Zuck or all nothing.” It’s a play on a line by Julius Caesar, the famous Roman dictator. Zuckerberg’s goal is to create a world where you’re on one of Meta’s platforms or you have no other options.

Is New Tech Always Inevitable?

Below the paywall, I’ll explore whether or not mixed reality is inevitable, given recent calls to get back together in person at work and to ditch phones in clubs, schools and other places.