Is Spatial Computing Really the Next Big Thing?
While the recent explosion in attention for AI has somewhat dampened the amount of news coverage it receives, massive technology companies like Meta continue to pour billions of dollars into development of virtual and mixed reality devices, software, and experience. On the cusp of Apple’s first foray into space, the question is entering the tech news cycle once more: is virtual or mixed reality really the future?
I think so. And not in the way VR and AR have historically been presented.
The counter argument is very easy to articulate: do people really want to spend substantial time in a completely or even partially virtual world? The metaverse looks like an awful place to spend five minutes let alone hours at a time. And so on.
The use cases and demos from the likes of Meta have been lacking in exactly the ways which tend to push “normal user” opinion away from new platforms, including those that end up being successful in the long run.
The technical limitations of the hardware, priced to be affordable (Meta has sold close to 20 million of their Quest headsets) are holding back software that is itself still unimaginative and unsophisticated.
The issue: a disconnect between companies and their customers.
The engineers and leaders who sit at the forefront of hardware and software development for these new devices make the mistake of getting excited about innovation for innovation’s sake. They have seen the technology built from below the ground up so even the current state of the technology is worth celebrating to them.
They’ve fallen into the trap of mistaking what they value (the sheer innovation they’ve pulled off) with what their customers value (a good user experience).
People will not make the move from traditional devices to spatial computers (Apple’s term for AR/VR devices, which I quite like) until the latter provide not just an equivalent experience but a better one.
Make that logical leap and a spatial computing future is less difficult to make out.
We already stare at illuminated rectangles of various sizes throughout our day, using them for work, entertainment, and personal connection.
Today, doing the same on a spatial computer is clunky. You need to put on a pair of heavy goggles with short battery life. The software and interfaces usually fall short of what we expect from our phones, tablets, and laptops, and nobody else is using them so you are the odd one out.
(Slight aside, I am curious about how many of those drawbacks Apple’s Vision Pro skates past – at the obvious new drawback of price).
Imagine, for a moment, that putting on a pair of “AR goggles” is as easy as putting on a pair of glasses. That the potential of spatial operating systems are realized, expanding your workspace, canvas, or FaceTime call beyond the current bounds of the size of the rectangle you happen to be using at the moment.
The first personal computers were a pain. The first cell phone was a $4,000 brick. These things get better. Early adopters will use the first iterations and five or ten years down the road, we’ll wonder how we got on without them.
A closing thought: I like looking to science fiction and fantasy when considering paths of innovation. It doesn’t always work given our imaginations are often limited by experience (as Ford said, people would have asked for faster horses, not the Model T). If something shows up often enough in our fiction, however, it could be considered to sit on humanity’s wish list. What’s the last futuristic movie you watched that doesn’t feature holographic displays, communication, or workspaces?
Spatial computing is part of the future. Whether our most recent attempt at it gets us to that future remains to be seen.