David Francis

The reactions to the Vision Pro are an incredible encapsulation of what bugs me so much about snarky techno-pessimism. There's no conviction. AR/VR was a canonical overhyped technology, one that proved that some overhyped technologies just never make it. There were millions of hot takes about how AR/VR would never work, how the metaverse was stupid, etc... And then Apple makes one presentation and people are like, "Oh, yeah, well when you do AR/VR that way that looks really cool I would love to use that. AR/VR is the future!" The Vision Pro situation captures the general problem nicely. People are able to touch and feel the current, shitty stepping stone version of any product. They’re able to easily point out its flaws and opine on how something like that could never work. But, like, of course. It’s a shitty stepping stone version. It’s much harder to imagine what the best people in the world will build when given the time, resources, iterations, and lessons to do it better than anyone has ever done it. If you could, you’d be one of the best people in the world, and you’d be building it. It happens over and over again -- AI, biotech, electric cars, space, solar, I'm sure it's going to happen in crypto. The Gartner Hype Cycle remains undefeated. Next time, take a beat and think, “What would I think about X if Apple put its might behind making one?” before dunking.