Portal or Prison?
Being social animals, we humans cannot survive exiled from our pack. So why do we lust after technology that perfects our isolation?
I’ve been mulling this over ever since trying Apple’s new headset. The experience—especially the panoramic travel and 3D videos—is gob-smacking. I left the demo wishing my mother hadn’t died before the iPhone 15 came out, because video captured by its camera and viewed via the Vision Pro could summon her to life. Ditto for my kids’ childhood, much of which I witnessed but can’t recall and would love to revisit now that I have the time to be truly present. There’s also the prospect, despite my being hideously claustrophobic and not a billionaire, of touring the Titanic, or the Great Pyramid, or the Moon.
Downside is, I’d be all by myself.
You can’t “share” the Vision Pro. It’s calibrated (and vision-corrected) to your corneas. Whatever you’re doing in that headset, you’re doing by your lonesome.
It seems a very American thing, this infatuation with innovation that seals us off from other humans. It’s our idea of luxury. Consider the McMansion, whose selling point was that no inhabitant needed to share one square foot of space, let alone the remote. Or our enormous vehicles, wombs designed to insulate us from the world even as they promise to help us explore it. Big screen TVs? Gigantic exits from the Family Room. Smartphones? Handheld portals to internet wormholes. And now the Vision Pro. Next time you see teenagers gathered around a restaurant table, their heads won’t be bowed in iPhone prayer. They’ll be socializing with avatars on their headsets.
It's not that I don’t crave retreat. I do. We all do. I can also fully appreciate how, for the millions of people who are limited by infirmity or disability, the Vision Pro is a dream come true.
But let me not be seduced into choosing the virtual over the real, the solitary over the social. Next time I miss my mother? Let me call one of my brothers and spend an hour laughing and crying as we compare memories. Next time I mourn not paying more attention to my children’s childhood? Let me go nuzzle my newborn grandson’s head and revel in his day-to-day development. Next time I need a real break—from the internet, from my smartphone and laptop, from driving, from ceaselessly breaking news? Let me meet up with friends for a hike or a climb none of us will ever forget.
Because my future is dictated by my present choices. Every moment I squander on virtual escape today makes more likely a tomorrow where all that I can do is sit, alone, and watch. That’s not a vision I want to buy into. It looks a lot like solitary confinement.
