Computing Comes for Our Senses

What will the world look like if the Apple Vision Pro succeeds?

One thing I’ve noticed in public spaces over the last few years is that fewer and fewer people can hear me.

I’ve given up on saying “On your left” when I run past people on the sidewalk because the majority of them have earbuds in and can’t hear me coming. At the grocery store, I see more and more people wearing earbuds or giant, noise-canceling, “don’t talk to me” headphones. They can’t hear me when I say “Excuse me” as I reach past them for a can of tomatoes. And as a schoolteacher, when I walk down the hallway between classes amidst a sea of Airpod-wearing kids, it’s unclear who’s available for conversation.

With the rise of high-quality Bluetooth earbuds and their over-the-ear equivalents, computers (especially the ones we carry in our pockets) have begun to dominate many people’s sense of sound. I know a number of teenagers who go through the majority of their days with at least one Airpod jammed in. They seem perfectly happy to have this intermediary between themselves and the world — when teachers ask to remove them at the beginning of class, they sometimes act as if they’re bewildered by the request.

And, lest I come off as a judgmental scold, I should acknowledge my own relationship with my earbuds. I love to listen to podcasts or music while doing mundane household tasks, so I often have an earbud in while doing the dishes or cooking. Am I listening to music on my earbuds right now, as I write this? You bet.

My wife frequently (and accurately) complains that she’s talking to herself about half the time around our house. Whenever she tries to ask me or one of our kids anything, chances are that we’re cut off from the world by our earbuds. But she got her first nice pair of earbuds recently as an add-on to a new phone, and now I find myself talking to no one in particular at times, too.

It seems like this is a trend that will only accelerate. More and more of us will be in our own little sonic universe when we move through the world. Our computers are coming to dominate our sense of sound.

I’ve been thinking about earbuds lately because of the hype surrounding the Apple Vision Pro, a $3500 “face computer” that the company hopes people will strap on over their eyes. After dominating our sense of hearing, Apple is coming for our sense of sight.

Now, it’s possible that this Apple headset is a dumb product that will fail. After all, Google Glass, which was relentlessly hyped a few years ago, never caught on because, well, it seemed supremely dorky. And Meta’s attempts to sell us some sort of VR-goggle metaverse have met with middling success at best.

Journalists seem to assume that Apple can work its usual magic with the Vision Pro. Apple loves to repackage existing technology in a shinier, slicker, and much more expensive package and hope that the old Reality Distortion Field convinces people to shell out their hard-earned cash for it.

Maybe the Vision Pro will be popular, maybe not. The early reviews seem to agree that it’s a really impressive piece of hardware, but nobody knows what you would actually do with this thing strapped to your head that would justify spending $3500.

But it’s the first piece of VR/AR technology that makes me think that this stuff may actually have a future as a mainstream product.

Aristotle, back in the 300s BCE, created a hierarchy of senses. He decided that sight was the most important, followed by hearing, smell, taste, and touch. We might quibble with the lower end of the rankings — I think he’s got smell too high — but it’s hard to argue with the top of the table.

Researchers have backed Aristotle’s intuition in a number of ways, looking at the percentage of the brain involved in sight (around one-third), measuring how much of our sense of the world comes from sight (perhaps 80%), or simply asking people how much they value their sense of sight (we’d rather lose our memories, our hearing, or develop a lifelong health problem than lose our sense of sight).

It’s possible, I suppose, that Apple will one day come out with the iTongue Pro or some sort of SmellPod Max and involve itself in our other senses, too. But those won’t matter nearly as much. Sight and hearing are by far the dominant senses for humans. What will happen if we let our computers dominate those senses?

If the Vision Pro and its successors are successful, we could be looking at a future in which people spend a big part of their days with their ears plugged up and goggles or, as the technology gets better, less obtrusive heads-up glasses, over their eyes. Our computers will become intermediaries between ourselves and the world. What will this mean?

First of all, it may shatter what’s left of our flagging attention spans. There’s still a tiny bit of friction between me and the addictive dopamine dispensers on my phone. I still have to pull the dang thing out of my pocket, unlock it, and click on an app. But what happens when I literally just have to look at an icon and tap my fingers together? If people are wearing some sort of computer headset, what chance do they have against the software engineers whose sole mission is to hijack their attention?

Second, the computers hogging our senses will limit our chances for serendipity and our ability to be present. I do have some rules about my earbuds. For example, I always leave them in my pocket when I’m walking the dog, for example, because I want to make sure I’m open to the experience. Sure, I might find the walk a little more boring than if I was listening to something, but I would never hear that beautiful birdsong over my podcast, nor would I be open to conversation with my neighbors as I pass by.

The more we let our computers dominate our senses, the less open we will be to the real world and the surprises and delights it can bring. We’ll be trading the sometimes boring but sometimes exhilarating real world for a more predictable set of stimuli. Plus, we’ll never really be here, now, which will only increase our feelings of alienation and anxiety.

Third, these intermediaries will cut us off from the people around us. Earbuds — and especially headphones — already project an antisocial vibe. They tell the world we don’t want to hear what it has to say (this is, perhaps, why they’re so popular with teenagers). Though Apple has included some clever features in its headset — people will see a projection of your eyes if you can see them, while they will see clouds if you can’t — these devices will, at best, leave us in states of ambiguity with each other.

What will the etiquette be for interrupting somebody at work who has their face computer on? Will already-lonely people use these devices to cut themselves off even more from the rest of the world? Humans are inherently social animals, and our senses of sight and hearing are the primary ways in which we take cues from each other and orient ourselves in society. If my ears are always plugged up and there’s a Microsoft Excel window partially obscuring the faces of the people I’m talking to, I’ll feel even more uneasy and isolated.

And, finally, let’s remember that these products are created by profit-driven companies who do not necessarily have our best interests at heart. What might it mean to give Apple Computer or one of its competitors the ability to inject whatever it wants into my field of vision? We’ve already seen what social media companies are willing to do to make a buck; what if some of those same people can put whatever they want directly into our ears and eyes all day long?

I’m sure the Vision Pro is very cool, as pretty much every reviewer claims. I would love to watch a movie on a virtual life-size screen in front of me, or scroll the web on a 10-foot diagonal “monitor.” But I worry that, if we surrender the two primary senses through which we experience the world to our computers, the costs will outweigh the benefits.

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