Apple Vision Pro: is augmented reality a bad thing for the climate crisis?

Apple just dropped the Vision Pro augmented reality goggles at its Worldwide Developers Conference and the promo paints a picture of a new way of life.

If you've read Ernest Cline's Ready Player One it's a picture you'll be uncomfortably familiar with. Apple shows people living their life in a manufactured reality, headset on. Some of the parallels with Cline's dystopian novel feel almost deliberate. The headsets are wired with a thick cable, much like an author might have imagined them in 2011 when Cline wrote the book. The keynote shows people in booths to give a glimpse into their homes, but the oblong boxes bear a striking resemblance to the Portland Avenue Stacks, the stacked caravans lived in by people perpetually plugged into virtual reality in Ready Player One.

The more you watch, the more dystopian it feels. Apple shows adults in the Vision Pro goggles while their kids play in the background, and people turning up the 'immersion' in an office so the goggles block out their surroundings; all they can see are their app windows (as if return to office needed any more setbacks).

Meetings, work, and school can all be done in a virtual reality, one created by companies using the Reality Creator Pro tool (yes, that's actually what it's called).

The features Apple has added to make the product seem a bit less world-ending only serve to add to the motion sickness you feel from the renders of the Vision Pro displays. The 'screen eyes' the goggle projects to let others know you can see them are frankly haunting.

Apple, 2023

Even the technical discussion is unnerving. It feels Orwellian to follow an announcement that you're releasing a product with the intention of changing the way people live, to push people into the metaverse, with an in-depth discussion of the knitting on the Vision Pro headband.

The bits that really unnerved me, though, were when Alan Dye talked about being able to 'visit' incredible landscapes and 'experience' new places. Even 'see' the dinosaurs.

Will augmented reality improve our connection to other communities, allow us to appreciate the incredible habitats around the world that we'd never otherwise get a chance to visit?

Will the likes of Vision Pro empower us to collaborate to fight climate change, revolutionise the way that we envision land management and model change?

Or will it push us even further away from the outdoors?

Children's connection to nature has been declining for decades. With Walt Disney confirming that Disney Plus will be available on the Vision Pro from day one, will a new generation of kids grow up experiencing a manufactured reality?

If people can experience a reality that has been created will they neglect the reality that's outside their home? Will people care so much about the extinction of a species if they can interact with that species forevermore with the push of a button or a flick of their eyes?

Will a new type of misinformation emerge where users 'experience' pristine habitats? Will we 'travel' through an in-tact Amazon rainforest? And if we do, will it show us what could be and inspire us to act, or will it encourage complacency?

Edited photos showing what a landscape could look like if ecosystems are restored is inspiring in part because the restoration gives people a chance to experience the living, breathing version of the place, only represented fractionally in a photo or video. But will augmented reality have the same effect, if you can (or think you can) experience the same thing from home?

The closer augmented reality gets to reality, the less important it will be to protect the wonder of the real world.

Will people use these products, or will they want to stay in the real world? The two aren't mutually exclusive. Most of us spend more time scrolling on our phones than we'd like to, because they're designed to be addictive. Augmented reality products will be designed with the same goal in mind: maximising uptake and usage time. Will we be able to resist the pull of the metaverse?

Augmented reality products like Vision Pro will undoubtedly come with a whole host of benefits, but there's a reason so many viewers feel like we've woken up in dystopian fiction.

Reality Creators can create augmented reality however they like, while the real world slips further into crisis.