The future of computers and Zuckerberg gets roasted

Apple Vision

What happened?

On Friday, Apple finally shipped their latest product: Apple Vision Pro. This marks a pretty massive moment for the company and the industry, as the shift from physical laptop/PC style computing potentially shifts to what people are calling ‘spatial computing’.

So what is Apple Vision Pro?

As you can see from the image above, it’s a headset with a glass ‘visor’ that makes you look like you’ve gone to Apres ski in the year 2100. Most of you will be familiar with and may have even used, virtual reality goggles. With virtual reality, as it says on the tin, you put them on and are transported into a different virtual world and can view your new reality.

Some of you might be familiar with augmented reality (AR), as well which is where your reality is the same but virtual experiences are placed on top of it. While you might not have realised it pulling funny faces and putting on dog ears on Snapchat is actually AR.

The Apple Vision Pro is what’s called mixed reality - Virtual Reality + Augmented reality. Ok before you start to feel like you’re in the matrix with too many realities going on let me break it down.

How they can be used

Imagine you are sitting at your laptop on a bare desk. Slip on your new Vision Pro and you will now see your laptop in front of you, but in addition you can now place 3 extra monitors (screens) around your laptop using the Vision Pro. You could also augment a keyboard to type on and a mouse to use - neither of which really exists. You can essentially utilise both your reality and that of a computer in the space around you - hence Apple calls it Spatial Computing.

You might be able to see that there are enormous potential applications of this. Virtual calls, workspaces, DIY (think of having the most perfect engineer in your ears/eyes the entire time!), healthcare (surgeons can have the knowledge/experience of the internet with them during surgery), warfare (a soldier could have vital battlefield information overlayed on their real world view) and so many more things.

The feedback from reviewers so far has been overwhelmingly positive. James Cameron, the visionary behind Avatar and The Titanic, described it as a “religious experience” and Casey Neisat, the legendary YouTuber, thinks it is going to change the world (I would highly encourage you to watch the video below of Casey showing some of its capabilities).

My take: This is the worst Vision Pro that will ever come out. Compare the first iPhone to what we use today, the first MacBook, the first iPad. Apple are masters of product innovation, and I can’t wait to see what Apple Vision Pro 2.0 looks like.

Watch

That being said, the expression a picture tells a thousand words, couldn’t be more true. Watch this video to get a real sense of what it can do.

Zuck Got Roasted

What happened?

This week, Mark Zuckerberg and other social media CEOs got dragged up in front of Congress and received a verbal beating.

Why does this matter?

The US is one of the most politically divided places in the world right now but one thing both sides can agree on is the dislike for the social media giants. 

Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Meta) and the CEOs of Twitter, Snapchat, Discord, and TikTok sat down in front of a bipartisan committee because of the damage their platforms were inflicting on children and young adults.

Ok but why is this worth reading about?

Because this wasn’t a slap on the wrist, the congressmen/women smelled blood and they were out to feed. Senators from both sides grilled all of them, but especially Zuckerberg, describing stories of self-harm and abuse of young people. A group of parents were watching on, all of whom had children who had received some form of online abuse, and harassment and in some cases had committed suicide. They booed when the CEOs walked in and cheered when the politicians dealt finishing blows.

At one point Mark Zuckerberg was forced to stand and apologize to all of them publicly. 

And here is my controversial take: This is a waste of political time and energy on the wrong solution.

Going deeper

What these politicians want to do is repeal a piece of legislation called Section 230. Wtf is that you ask, dear reader? It is a law that means certain types of internet companies are not liable for what is on their websites. 

For example, The New York Times is legally liable if what they publish is defamatory or illegal. Facebook however is not legally responsible for the gibberish your grandma is spewing on her village Facebook group. Jokes aside, on the extreme end, this means that Facebook can’t be sued if someone posts self-harm content for example. The nuance of this debate comes down to whether you believe Facebook is making editorial decisions about the content it promotes through its algorithm, and so should be responsible. 

Time to hold two conflicting ideas at the same time. It is deeply sad that such horrible things happen to children on the internet. However, these platforms have billions of monthly active users, and Facebook has 40,000 people working on content moderation. When you have a billion people using your services, bad things happen. This is a law of large numbers.

That doesn’t mean we should throw out a law that protects the freedom of speech of millions of others. You can post something wrong and stupid, and Facebook won’t take it down because they won’t get sued for it. 

And it should stay that way. That doesn’t also mean, that there isn’t a needed conversation to be had about what age children should be before they can use social media.

Throwing Section 230 would not solve the problem, but create a completely new set of issues as well.