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Comment by SamuelAdams | Hacker News Reader

Read the novel Warcross by Marie Lu.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcross?wprov=sfti1

Imagine a world where visual, immersive tech is the default.

Look around your home. Realize how much money you have spent on cosmetics. Pictures, photographs, throw pillows, plants, paint, lighting, etc.

What if all of that could be replaced at the snap of a command? What if you could hang Christmas lights virtually in less than 10 seconds? What if a poor family who could not afford Christmas lights and decorations could now snap them into place in a second, for free?

Sure these goggles are not that mainstream yet. The battery life is too short. They are bulky and sweaty. But the tech will improve. What if wearing immersive goggles was no more difficult than wearing glasses? It might take a few decades but the tech will get there.

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Sure but.. there’s just the fundamental “not real” element of digital “stuff”. It goes away when the $3500 headset comes off. And I’m not even a pure luddite about this shit, I enjoy getting a new sword in Diablo IV, but the notion that the average guy will buy VR Christmas deco for their AR home (which they don’t own) is hilarious/deluded in a special way

> What if a poor family who could not afford Christmas lights and decorations could now snap them into place in a second, for free?

Sure that would be neat, but wouldn't it be even more neat if "poor family who could not afford Christmas lights and decorations" didn't have to exist? It's not like that's how it _has_ to be. It just _will_ be like that if we just continue building this deranged tech-dystopia where we sell the problem as the "solution" to itself.

Almost all the furniture in my house we got for free—and it's not bad furniture, either! We just benefit from people who spend enough on regularly replacing their furniture that a $3500 device looks like an improvement.

As for Christmas lights, they run $10/25ft. The cost on these goggles would have to come down a lot for a family that can't afford lights to be able to afford a pair of these for every family member (because you can't have the 4yo excluded from the Christmas lights).

> Realize how much money you have spent on cosmetics. Pictures, photographs, throw pillows, plants, paint, lighting, etc

Like a $100 bucks at most? That poor family will surely buy every member a used car’s worth of device. And no, I don’t see it a reality neither in 3-4 generations — it is fundamentally more expensive to produce than a TV/laptop/phone so if its price lowers, so does the rest.

It is not a must like a phone is, so why would they not buy a really good TV instead for a tiny fraction of the money?

What makes a phone a must? Why can’t a pair of AR goggles (eventually) replace a phone? What if iPhones go the way of laptops and stop selling as much because people prefer an all in one device on their face?

That’s the sell here. You no longer need a laptop and tv and phone and touchscreen in your car. All that can be replaced with this one device.

Except that you don’t have nearly as good an input method for it than a smartphone is. Also, can you honestly imagine people walking around with something like this on their head?

Thieves and muggers are salivating.

Is that another scifi novel where you forget it’s set in a dystopia?

We're talking about a product and you present a story.

The OP I replied to was asking about use cases for an augmented reality product, I listed a few.

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