Reality is defined by the world we live in and the rules it is bound by. Physics, time, societal norms—these are all things that limit us to what we call our reality. But what if we could generate a new reality to live in? A virtual reality.
Virtual reality, or VR, is a computer-generated simulation designed to immerse participants in an artificial world that they can interact with and explore through the use of a headset and other accessories. Many people, including myself, have joined the craze with excitement, using the technology for both recreation and education, interacting with other users, experiencing 360 videos, or just playing immersive games. The top tech companies have begun their race to develop their visions for these worlds, with Apple being one of the most recent producers of their own headsets.
The Apple Vision Pro is “Apple’s first spatial operating system” that allows you to use your hands, eyes, and voice to create intuitive interactions around you. The feature “EyeSight” tells other people what you’re doing while using the headset, and from one review, the experience is similar to viewing your phone directly through your eyes. At the current price point of $3500, it’s not a product that everyone will be quick to get their hands on, but only time will tell how popular it will become as the design becomes sleeker and the interest becomes more mainstream.
However, as with all new developments, we have to stop and ask ourselves: Is this the right way to go? It seems like there may be a good argument against it.
My first introduction to the Apple Vision Pro was a video by YouTube creator Eddy Burback. In his video, he discussed the difficulties he had with its setup, grievances with its price point given its limitations, and most interestingly, the implications and ethical concerns for this product and the overall push for more social interaction in the virtual world.
Hadi Ardiny and Esmaeel Khanmirza vouch for the technology as a concept, noting that the integration of technology like virtual reality into education helps students gain hands on understanding and experience abstract concepts that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. Other forms of computer generated reality have brought peace to grieving family members through realistic holograms of deceased loved ones, though that topic brings about moral questions of its own (Stein, 508). I have personally used VR as a means to teach about space in STEMcomm’s ASF After Dark event and can see its benefits. However, these benefits have yet to outweigh the negatives for me.
The idea that we are currently in a “loneliness epidemic” is an interesting perspective to incorporate into this conversation. Dilip V. Jeste, Ellen E. Lee, and Stephanie Cacioppo hypothesize that “there is probably a common underlying thread of social anomie and disconnection resulting from the rapid growth of technology, social media, globalization, and polarization of societies… Information overload, 24-hour connectivity, countless but superficial and sometimes harmful social media relationships, and heightened competition have elevated the level of stress in the modern society.” This sentiment was shared not only by Burback when discussing the peculiar push of an AI chat bot while using the headset but also by Yi Mou and Kun Xu’s research into human-AI social interactions. In their study, they found that users of the application WeChat showed higher levels of neuroticism and were less conscientious when conversing with AI. With this, the question is then posed: will computer manufacturing ever truly substitute in-person social reactions? Or, more importantly, should it?
I tend to agree with the philosopher Albert Borgmann, who is of the opinion that technology is a tool that, when mishandled or taken for granted, can devalue craftsmanship and the rich community ties that uphold our society. Though I don’t believe that the Apple Vision Pro will cause the downfall of our society, I find that we should be wary of its ability and intention to pull people away from our reality. New technology will always be exciting and often beneficial to the masses, but I think that it is important to be both open-minded and skeptical, inquisitive yet grounded.
Sources
Ardiny, H., & Khanmirza, E. (2018). The role of AR and VR Technologies in education developments: Opportunities and challenges. 2018 6th RSI International Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (IcRoM), 482–487. https://doi.org/10.1109/icrom.2018.8657615
Burback, E. (2024, March 29). Apple’s $3500 nightmare. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLMZPlIufA0
Fallman, D. (2009). A different way of seeing: Albert Borgmann’s philosophy of technology and human–computer interaction. AI & SOCIETY, 25(1), 53–60. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-009-0234-1
Jeste, D. V., Lee, E. E., & Cacioppo, S. (2020). Battling the modern behavioral epidemic of loneliness. JAMA Psychiatry, 77(6), 553–554. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2020.0027
Mou, Y., & Xu, K. (2017). The media inequality: Comparing the initial human-human and human-ai social interactions. Computers in Human Behavior, 72, 432–440. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.02.067
Stein, J.-P. (2021). Conjuring up the departed in virtual reality: The good, the bad, and the potentially ugly. Psychology of Popular Media, 10(4), 505–510. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000315
