Ha elég messzire jutottál, a megoldás a hátad mögött van... :-)
Respektu Tempon. Tiszteld az Időt / Az Időt tiszteld.
International readers, please use the english tag to get a first impression, thank you.
Szerintem nem az a kérdés, hogy hisz-e valaki a jövőben, hanem hogy képességeihez mérten érte vagy ellene cselekszik, egyáltalán érti-e amit csinál, amiről beszél. Ez gyakorlatilag lehetetlen, ha nemhogy nem érti de nem is ismeri a múltat. ("Óriások vállán állva" az üres fecsegés is messzebbre hangzik...)
A múlt nem csak kijelöli a 10 kérdés közül a lényegeseket, de választ is ad rájuk. Tapasztalatom szerint viszont ezek nem csak a nagyközönség, hanem informatikai doktori kutatás környezetében is kívül esnek a komfortzónán (streetlight effect).
The Apple Vision Pro is mind blowing in many ways and signals an important inflection point in the industry. But there is also a lack of clarity in how this all comes together in devices that we'll want to take out into the world and use on a daily basis. I call it the "messy middle." Camera/screen based MR/AR devices are great ways to preview the future, to test and learn, and take us toward the future devices that will be a part of our daily lives in a big way. My plea to the industry-- let's not lose sight of the ultimate goal: devices that can connect us to the real-world and people around us and make our experiece as human beings out in the world richer and better. I wrote a bit about how we view the future of AR here: https://lnkd.in/gquivyQn.
I see a philosophical difference manifested in AR hardware. Can you see through the device, or does the middle-man block your eyes with its screens and transfer the view from its cameras? I think I understand why Apple joined to the heavy-weight class as eventually, it will win there with its experience, momentum and capacity. But is that the right way? Should "augment" really mean separate, remix and project? I don't think so. A proper 3D augmentation over a directly visible environment is the future I would vote for. I don't want anyone to "immerse" in an artificial world, deal with motion sickness, bump into objects on a software glitch. Rather let them see the real world but spice it with a modest bubble of additional knowledge.
I don't think Apple is saying "This" is how AR should be done. They compiled a tech stack that was fit for purpose for a strategy and added in pass through AR because they could. It's like saying GM shouldn't make passenger vehicles because we need pick up trucks. Different devices for different jobs. In terms of the AVP, it is a reasonable solution using the critical mass of the tech available today. When see-through optical has enough tech in place to build enough useful features for a class of usage, then maybe they will play there also.
AVP/Apple: They desperately want a “new iPhone moment”. This is not a weird connector, a bad keyboard or a fanless machine that cooks itself. They will not let this go easily.
AVP itself: this device has no “job”, it is a general consumer device. We remember how mobile phones moved from socially rejected awkward slabs to critical part of our individual and social life, unconsciously redefining “presence”.
AVP-like job: the head mounted display in fighter planes. The key reference frame is the plane and its sensors, the HMD must know its position relative to the plane. Not a random street.
AR in general: Damocles (1968) appeared right after Sketchpad (1963). Visual computing and AR is here from day one of informatics but with no "real job". I happen to have one: my system manages all data in a dynamic semantic graph (now testing on the full SEC EDGAR export on my laptop 🙂 ).
Another use case: the AR glass is a dumb, see-through screen and motion capture dots. People go into a conference room with lots of cameras. The 3D interactive hologram in the middle is projected for all participants. Cheap, safe, can be done today. Only the profit margin is low.
I actually had a bit of a hard time following all of your thoughts, but context can be hard in this minimal channel. I enjoy exploring new perspectives but I can't comment on much. 'They desperately want a “new iPhone moment”' I agree with that. I don't think this is it. I love that they are driving the market but I don't think they have a leading solution yet. They may make a market but noting like iPhone. iPhone sold 1m plus in it's first year and 10m plus in year 2. The AVP projection is 600k year 1. They sold out 40k in a day, now preordered out to about 80k total. I think everything after 200k is going to be a slog. Only time will tell. It won't be a flop but won't be a killer device either. Or this post might embarrass me in the future.
Anyways. The listed aspects are those we should talk about to evaluate AR as a technology, medium or social phenomenon. But Apple with AVP changes the topic to market penetration and profit, and with gigantic effort that only they can invest, may push it through and move this product from awkward to desirable for the public. AVP must not be a success as a product to make this the next iPhone moment.
That turned mobile communication, a technology that could be available for $100 and maybe even without charger (microcontrollers, solar panel, eInk display) to an area of entertainment market with billions of fragile but beautiful glass slabs every year that already replace / overflow our eyes and memory, each for $1000 (fake figures, just the magnitude). And green if you exclude Ghana and alike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbogbloshie
AVP makes the Hitchhikers' Peril Sensitive Sunglasses or "the blind lead the blind" phrase so real. (sorry for venting)
Larry Rosenthal Reading your comments I thought you should refer to Postman - and there you are! I see the beauty of this lecture to the Apple developers in 1993. Quote: "Television should be the last technology we will allow to have been invented and promoted mindlessly" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqxgCoHv_aE&t=5285s
I started talking to computers (coding) at 12, now I am 51 with a whole life doing that. I see a crucial moment when this ("my"!) industry wants to strap a screen on the face of people, completely isolating them from the reality (yet acknowledging that we live in a world in which they have reasons to prefer that).
But I also admire the Apollo program and the lesson they learned when in a go-fever they burned the Apollo-1 crew during a test, worded perfectly by Gene Kranz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zjAteaK9lM
Building a technological civilization in general, and altering the human perception of the world on individual and community level in particular, is also "terribly unforgiving of carelessness, incapacity and neglect". I know that my words have no weight, but for whatever this counts, here they are:
Informatics is more like the old story of Pandora's box. We were not careful and have all the misery out in the world but we have to open it again to find the hope. I went back to the University after 20 some years in the industry and via my research I finally met the "founding fathers of informatics" who saw all this coming. You find a short summary here from 2018 (now trying to create some videos in my spare time but that's not my comfort zone for sure) https://mondoaurora.org/TheScienceOfBeingWrong_KAIS.pdf
For motivation, look at Douglas Engelbart, his goals, achievements and modesty (and the date!). I did my research, his results are massive, today's informatics only scratches the surface hunting for profit. Imagine if we start listening to people like him instead of current "icons". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjWhQiwJzKg
Lorand Kedves the good news is sometimes, eventually, we do. Today the smog in the air, the smoke in restaurants, are all mostly gone in western cities. Smoking was as common as driving leaded fuel cars that got 8 miles to the gallon. Sometimes actions in society change. Sometimes it takes a civil war to change an action as well.
Larry Rosenthal Does this mean I wasted too much time taking seriously those "existential threat orgs" like the Cambridge University or the MIT or the UN? 🙂 Or thinking that actions without understanding like that of Edward Snowden (From Russia with Love) or Aaron Swartz (no joke here, RIP) may not help? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vz06QO3UkQ
I think you are right on MIPS. But I have been payed for clear thinking in rough situations and still here (with some more or less managed psychosomatic issues). My conclusion is that mankind needs a paradigm shift. The definition of that state is that there is no other option. (... and it is not a screen strapped on our faces showing the Brave New World - another Postman ref... 🙂 ) https://neilpostman.org/
Lorand Kedves ironically i didnt know of postman much in 93... i knew mcluhan much more.. as for his quote from 93.. maybe he got it from me.;) “ I’ve seen the future of the Metaverse and it looks like 1980's TV “ ,,, this was all part fo tHUNK! the digital network which we began in 92;) published as early MAC diskettes.;) BUT Postman, McLuhan and Chayefsky should all be mandatory learning today. but its probably too late. sigh.. i also lamented nback then that i never got to make real spaceships as i did in my college thesis, since by the time i graduated in 85 the worlds money was now stopped from going to reality and all investment was in the virtual of the PC or movie. So i made lots of tv and video game spaceships instead from 85-95. since i had to eat.;)
Lorand Kedves we do need a paradigm shift,. but certainly the stanford/ mit/ eff folks were not the people who we should have allowed to make the previous one.;) aaron died for their sins.
Larry Rosenthal I think I found a more constructive approach.
Institutions are by definition bound to the system and the current paradigm, thus work against any real shift. That can only come from "insane" individuals, as logical thinking based on a new paradigm is nonsense looking from the old one. In older words, "though this be madness, yet there is a method in it". In areas like physics you are lucky because you can use an equipment to show that your theory works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Szilard#Columbia_University
But in informatics, you work against human nature, quoting Postman: As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”. https://neilpostman.org/
Aaron lived a meaningful life chasing values beyond those of a "consumer society". He did not know enough about the past, substituted this gap with faith in people and communities. He did not lose against sins of individuals but roles they played.
On the other hand, I did my research, know that don't say much new but still against the current understanding. Here it starts. https://youtu.be/u-TFazXf_RU
Lorand Kedves the adults in the room failed him. Simple as that. They have failed most children who came after them. Many of those children have finally awakened. Most are not self blaming, they are getting very angry. Machines may hold man at bey longer than man alone, but soon they to age and fail.
Larry Rosenthal ... and adequately TRAINED (by the same institutions you blame because there is no better alternative).
In IT, you can't quote Bob Martin enough: "... if we are doubling every five years, then we always have half of the programmers less than five years of experience, which leaves our industry in a state of perpetual inexperience... the new people coming in must repeat the mistakes made by everyone else over and over and over and over, and there seems to be no cure for this..." https://youtu.be/ecIWPzGEbFc?t=3092s
Before saying so what, IT is a changing field, ask yourself if you think a commercial pilot or a brain surgeon is "experienced" after 5 years. With 30+ behind my back here, I can safely say: hard core IT is beyond reading the marketing materials of the latest tools and languages.
Informatics is literally brain surgery on civilization level. No wonder that it fails with the current bazaar attitude.
Larry Rosenthal That's why I so much respect Postman, an arts expert who could precisely analyze and predict the humane consequences of technology and engineering. To me, both other questions around "what" (products, services, stories) are equally important: "why" (arts and science) and "how" (technology and engineering). I agree, one should be expert in one - but be aware of and respect the other.
Larry Rosenthal "... i never got to make real spaceships as i did in my college thesis, since by the time i graduated in 85 the worlds money was now stopped from going to reality and all investment was in the virtual of the PC or movie. So i made lots of tv and video game spaceships instead from 85-95. since i had to eat.;)"
I missed this important comment... thank you!
I think I had more luck. I met with the Tao Te Ching and started programming my first computer, a Commodore 116 around the same time at age 12. I got CS BSc in 1994 but only met the founding fathers like Engelbart and critics like Postman after I returned to the academy at age 43 (CS MSc, half PhD). I had the privilege to spend 25+ years working on (and with) what I dare to call AI (far from the popular "state of the art"). Of course not on the surface but behind any paying jobs until I hit the glass ceiling, got fired, started again elsewhere. The money was just enough to raise three sons, not more.
“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity...” (correction, not Seneca) as I started this lecture 10 years ago. It aged well, like the picture at "I see the storm coming" is the Maidan Square riot, Ukraine, 2013. https://mondoaurora.org/TasteOfLuck.pdf
Civilization is another story. This is a most tricky form of the behavioral sink, when accumulated knowledge and tools free individuals from the constant struggle for survival. It moves the focus to communities (tribes, nations, ideologies, see also Dawkins and the meme theory) to the ultimate global level. Now the threat is the collapse of knowledge transfer under the power of the very technology invented to support it.
Can't quote JCR Licklider enough (1964) „... the "system" of man's development and use of knowledge is regenerative. If a strong effort is made to improve that system, then the early results will facilitate subsequent phases of the effort, and so on, progressively, in an exponential crescendo. On the other hand, if intellectual processes and their technological bases are neglected, then goals that could have been achieved will remain remote, and proponents of their achievement will find it difficult to disprove charges of irresponsibility and autism.”
Better to realize the importance of individual responsibility as part of the education, not under the threat of death
