Reality is Many Things to Different People
Coastal tourists looove whale watching. A tail the size of a Ford F150 breaches the water and everyone aboard ”Ooooo’s” and ”Ahhhh’s”, astounded by the whale’s majesty. Not me. I’d be below deck literally having a panic attack, because whales terrify me. They’re just too damn big.
In this way, “reality” has always been many different things to different people. We each come to an experience with unique backgrounds and unique perspectives, which contribute to altogether unique experiences. Two people watching the same events unfold may argue vehemently about what they just saw. Sometimes we can’t even agree on something as simple as the color of a dress.
Technology Makes Reality Harder to Pin Down
Technology has glommed an additional layer of complexity to this psychological dilemma. Many technologies allow us to experience things that are not actually there. A simple example of this is a man listening to a podcast through headphones. He’s hearing real voices — loud and clear — that nobody else around him can even remotely hear. His reality is being colored in a way that nobody else’s is (in addition to his psychological uniqueness). He’s laughing alone at the end of a subway car, and the rest of us look at him and shrug.
Augmented Reality Will Upend Real Reality
Augmented Reality is the next technology is that going to shake up how each of us experiences reality differently. And by shake up, think Vitamix blender inside of a cement truck driving through an earthquake. Really good AR that’s available on everyday glasses (we’re not too far off, save for size and battery life), is going to allow us to see and hear customized realities at all times. The terrifying implication is that once AR really arrives, you may never again be confident that you know what the person standing next to you is actually seeing.
To paint a simple picture: You’re sitting in the town park with your son — the sun is out, and birds are chirping across the grassy field before you. Except you’re not paying attention to any of that. Instead, you’re watching the Dodgers-Yankees ball game play out live across the entire field (imagine: lifesize holographic players running around). At the same time, your Pokemon-fanatic son is chasing anime monsters that he sees bounding around the same grassy field. You have no idea a Charizard is lurking behind the far elm tree, and he has no idea that Aaron Judge just cranked one over the elm and out of the park. You’re both staring at the same elm in the same town park, yet he’s mildly terrified and you’re clapping in celebration. A stranger a few feet away gives you a look, because he’s laying back watching dolphins swim through the clouds above through his AR lenses. If this sounds like you’ve all been dosed with acid and are enduring your own individual trips, that’s sort of what I think we’ll be up against.
Now consider the billions of different interests, styles, tastes and fetishes that people have today, and consider that we’re able to create and replicate all of them through computer generation. That’s about how many different visibly-unique realities we might have coinciding on Earth.
AR Will Raise Real Ethical Dilemmas
The problem is, then, that once AR gets “good” and widely available, we might never be sure what another person is seeing ever again. While we already live in a world where we’re never quite sure what our friend might be looking at on his phone across the dinner table, at least we’re able to beckon them and point at something we both can see out the window. With AR, however, you might encounter some magical moment with a favorite animated character, but you might have no way of sharing it, save swapping glasses for a moment (which sounds like a clunky and mildly gross prospect). I’m sure you, like I do, get annoyed when a friend is laughing at something on his phone and doesn’t share it. It will be even more annoying when they’re staring at you, laughing because they see a Pikachu bouncing on your head. I hope AR designers will create an easy way to flip what I’m seeing to a friend’s AR glasses, so that it can be shared, otherwise we run the risk of further being siloed in our own worlds than we currently are with our phones.
So far what I’ve described is an annoyance and a (further) detriment to human connection. But there are real, ethical considerations that we will need to get ahead of as well:
Good ol’ Porn
Whenever a new technology comes along, one of the first questions that entrepreneuring people ask is: How can this be used to jerk off? The most obvious ethical concern, therefore, will be around how pornographic material is consumed on AR glasses. While it shouldn’t be an issue to indulge in some AR porn in the comfort of your own bedroom, as the spirit moves you, decent AR will allow you to overlay porn in any setting. And this doesn’t just mean dropping nameless holographic nudes into the current scene; AR will also be able to overlay naked bodies onto real people in the current environment. That means instead of seeing you in the yellow sundress you’re wearing, they’re seeing you stand naked (computer generated, but it will be trivial to get fairly accurate to your proportions).
It’d already be disgusting to learn that a coworker had been imagining his female coworkers naked during meetings; now think about how fast your skin would crawl finding out that he’d been seeing them naked through AR enhancement. Ick.
Performance Enhancing Drugs
Ok, so it’s a bit of a stretch to refer to AR as a “drug” but it could be a real performance enhancer. A heads up display (HUD) will allow for myriad data and images to be overlaid on objects that can provide a boost in most tasks at hand. So far, not a problem! For example, “fair” use cases have been discussed for airplane technicians using an AR HUD to highlight mechanical breaks and signify how to connect various engine parts. Less fair use cases, however, may also arise. Consider a baseball player whose AR glasses can calculate the trajectory of a ball and tell him exactly where he needs to run to catch it. Or consider a fraudster whose AR HUD reveals personal information about a bank teller (through scanning social networks, perhaps) that allows him to easily socially engineer her in order to pry confidential information.
And of course there are gray areas, like an office worker whose AR goggles are able to read the body language and microexpressions of coworkers to understand their true, underlying feelings. While this latter case may seem relatively benign, it could also be used to “hack” people using emotional info that would normally not be consciously available to the average person.
Distraction
A technology like AR will definitely prove to be highly addicting and distracting. People who you entrust with your life and the lives of loved ones will become distracted by AR in a way that makes current iPhone distraction feel like meditative zen. Using AR to spice up a walk in the park is one thing, but using it to stave off boredom through a 9 hour shift in a flight control tower, or as you monitor children as a nanny is another. Furthermore, what will stop drivers from enjoying a movie through AR glasses to pass time on the road today (fingers crossed that self-driving cars arrive first!)?
Today when people fight on-the-job boredom by swiping through their phone, at least it’s readily apparent that they’re distracted, i.e. you stand a chance of snapping them back to attention. How do you, however, identify distraction when you have no idea whether and what someone is focused on in AR?
AR: Not If, but When
Widespread AR is going to happen. The technology is already available on all new smart phones, and moving it to everyday glasses is just a matter of shrinking the components and increasing battery life, which are both things that engineers are very good at with time. When that happens, you may never know — with any real confidence — what the person right next to you is actually seeing.
Let that sink in for a moment.
If we thought smart phones were a detriment to human connection and attention, we haven’t seen anything yet. AR may make for a magical world, but also a troubling and lonely one.