I have not tested Apple’s AR/VR Vision Pro system because I do not buy into the infinite future-selling of technology. I know the merit of many Apple engineers personally, and I trust the technology implementation will be awesome. But let me say this again, technology that does not improve human adaptability to nature’s entropy is not only worthless but lulls the regenerative excellence of humanity to sleep.
Let’s parlay for a minute the failures of previous endeavors that required people to wear a headset of any kind. The failure of 3D television, Google Glass, and Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse should have been warning shots to the bow of Tim Cook’s ship. But what else can you expect from a beancounter CEO who does not understand how technology should serve human needs?
Steve Jobs was much more intelligent. Like all great parents, he understood that human wants do not equate to human needs. That a child’s desire to eat ice cream every day does not support the longevity of wellness you wish for them. Hence, Steve produced a vector for Apple of what he believed humans needed before they even knew what they wanted.
Tim Cook is not a parent, and it shows. He panders to a board to build more of what he thinks people want, not what people need. Serving human needs requires understanding the bigger picture of human evolution and a vision of supporting the regenerative excellence of the human species. It also requires an understanding of the delicate pairing of collective and personal interests, a balance Tim failed to understand regarding privacy.
Humanity faces a severe threat that should not be lulled to sleep in a universe of abundant consumerism, self-indulgence, and mindless entertainment. Nature’s entropy, defined by Richard Feynman as the decline of available energy, requires humanity to adapt to doing more with less. Society must strengthen its renewal from one generation to another to deal with the increasingly different and reinforcing amplitudes of the effects of entropy. That humanitarian objective is the opposite of the stultifying addiction to the indulgence of self technology induces today.
Technology, as the laissez-faire vibrator of the selfish “developed” world, has been granted carte-blanche to undermine nation-state sovereignties in dire need of a theory to drive a compass of human excellence in line with nature’s first-principles. So, instead of building goggles to stare into a virtual world, as enticing as eating ice-cream every day could be, Apple should pursue technology to face the real world that allows us all to best adapt to nature’s entropy.
I suggest Apple to take advantage of the gaping opportunity to improve the real world before governments realize that was their job in the first place.
