I’m not sure how I feel about direct action against those who would wear these in public, myself, but I can tell you right now there will be a robust constituency for that.
@adamgreenfield genuine question, why do you want to attack people who are just doing their own thing. You can think it’s silly, you can laugh, whatever but talking like this is just severely uncalled for. Would you feel the same way about people carrying around sound equipment or big bulky headphones?
It just seems like a visceral reaction of loathing
@adamgreenfield >Between 1995 and 2000, he served as a psychological operations specialist (later sergeant) in the United States Army’s Special Operations Command.
@Arcana I suggest starting with the AR/VR chapter of my 2017 “Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life,” but there are strongly relevant bits in “Against the Smart City” (2013), “Urban Computing and its Discontents” (2007) and “Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing” (2006), in the latter particularly the sections on ethical development of interfaces meant to be used in public space.
@Arcana I also suggest, if you’re not already familiar with him and what he believes, looking into Marc Andreessen’s recent thinking about “reality privilege” and augmentive and virtual mediation as, effectively, consolation prizes offered to the multitude for their manifest failure to be wealthy.
@adamgreenfield Yeah I was just looking at that now actually
I do actually understand where you’re coming from, though I do think it applies similarly to things like audio equipment
I do think societies are becoming more atomized and it’s not a good thing, though I do see a lot of response to the Vision Pro that seems quite visceral and knee jerk
Especially the “direct action” point did somewhat imply attacking them or robbing them which I don’t necessarily think would help societies become less atomized
I apologize for potential earlier hostility in my messages, I can certainly be a bit of a shit talker, but this is actually something I don’t disagree with you on, more on what I perceived to be the proposed solution
If I may ask, and I’m sure you’ve written about it in your books, but I presume just attacking such people isn’t the whole of your thoughts on the matter, what do you think should be done regarding such things?
@Arcana Well, let me clarify that for me, “direct action” may mean something like asking a user to leave a restaurant, place of business or other shared space. For some, it might include physical confrontation – and though I’d never advocate that, by the same token I hesitate to say that it wouldn’t ever be justified, in cases of e.g. surreptitious image capture.
@Arcana For me the bottom line is that it obliterates the possibility of being emotionally present for the others around you, and/therefore the kind of respectful, face-to-face encounter, as rough equals, that my preferred flavor of politics is built on.
@adamgreenfield@Arcana Are you legitimately saying that someone who's possibly escaping others without causing harm should be forced, possibly violently, into conflicts?
Are you for real?
You could petition to have the image capture part be removed or done in safe enough methods (say kept local), not advocate for basically bullying.
@lanodan@adamgreenfield I go clarification on this but the meaning seems to be mostly businesses and such asking people not to wear them inside which if that’s the case, I don’t think that’s unreasonable
@lanodan@Arcana@adamgreenfield What he is doing is the equivalent of getting his laptop out and continuing with work using public transport. Except he no longer needs to worry about having a table or his lap.
I understand the concern that he isn't going to be aware of his surroundings or be able to be present with the other people there. But we are already atomised, I don't think this is much different to phones or laptops in public. There are better ways to tackle being present in public, but that requires creating an inviting environment that you want to be present in that isn't overwhelming the senses and creating communities where people grow up with and know each other. It requires creating high trust in society, fewer people around so there are less strangers. I don't think cities are conducive to this... although you can probably create a mini-community where neighbours know each other and looked out for each other if people didn't keep moving around and weren't so quick to cut people out over differences in opinions.
@lanodan@Arcana My considered belief is that it is exceedingly unlikely for a user of a mediation device like this to be respectful or considerate of other users of a shared space.
@Arcana@lanodan For many purposes, it is a class of interactions with sufficiently common characteristics that not every instance of that class needs to be investigated on its own merits. And indeed I have been giving this matter sustained consideration – in four books and a quarter-century of thought.
@Arcana@lanodan (I see you’re a native French speaker – my “Radical Technologies,” in which I consider many of these questions in depth, ought to be out in French translation literally any day now, courtesy of the good folks at Présence(s) editions.)
@Arcana@lanodan I am (all too) happy to go into the reasons why, in literally pages of detail, but for the purposes of this conversation I think it’s sufficient to say that a mediating visor is not in any way a neutral artifact, and conveys a strong implicit statement that both the space itself and other human and nonhuman occupants of that space are less important and less worthwhile than whatever occupies the UI.
@adamgreenfield@Arcana Which is also true for headphones and smartphones, specially when combined.
And it can end up being seriously dangerous in some situations (like I frequently see what I dub "smartphone zombie" on the street), but that's not the one pictured. And even in dangerous cases it should be proportional.
@lanodan@Arcana “Anti-“ is a bit strong. Let’s just say it makes me profoundly sad, especially when I see a couple at a restaurant looking at their phones for any sustained amount of time instead of one another.
@adamgreenfield@Arcana Yeah, it's sad and smartphones apps ought to be less invasive and addictive, but for people, it's their choice and we ought to respect that.
I will say though that I don’t entirely think it’s their choice. Some people can very easily get addicted and start basically unthinkingly scrolling for a constant dopamine hit which is algorithmically optimized for. This is something I expect to get worse and it’s something that I do think is mentally damaging people.
@Arcana@adamgreenfield Yup, problem is, people aren't going to easily quit it, managing addictions is hard, it's not the kind where you can just toss them out and hope making their subjective environment worse won't also make the situation worse.
You do need to establish boundaries when needed though, like yeah VR/AR headset when moving around ought to be banned if it's not already the case in a way or another.
Because it would cause the same issues as cellphones when driving.
@lanodan@Arcana@adamgreenfield so it’s essentially this again, except the egoistic creep are now empowered by the fact the leave me alone signaling device is novel and somewhat controversial
@adamgreenfield@Arcana@lanodan it’s you who seem to really struggling to accept they don’t really matter all too much to other people on a train to the point they are employing all these fancy words to make a case for policing other people to like literally notice you lol
I’m not sure to see any significant difference with someone using a smartphone in the same situation.
To avoid any misunderstanding: I think the smartphone is the worst thing that happened to human social relationships in the last decades. So I am not taking the defence of VR headsets here, but trying to make people realize that this is nothing new or specific to VR headsets.
Add comment