I'm a neuroscientist examining how the human brain enables how we think about the world. Think of our brains as computers (a thought itself!). Then add up all of the computers you've ever owned. Reconstruct the gaps in their use. Consider, rather than electricity, their power comes from food, sleep, and emotion. That's your brain - the computer with more memory than you'll ever know and more precious than anything you'll ever own.
Like saying robots will never reach human-level dexterity. Might be true, but so what? AIs and robots will significantly advance what’s possible and in unpredictable ways, just like any technology in the last 30 years.
Imagine if MSFT didn’t allow iPods on Windows or took 30% of every song sold in iTunes. Crazy how much we’ve been collectively gaslit. Apple helped the anti-trust case against MSFT.
This comparison to Windows and MSFT is really interesting. And it is really crazy how much we’ve accepted from Apple regarding lock-in. I’m impressed that the Apple Watch made it in the lawsuit exactly because it feels like a niche product because of the plethora of other smartwatches. But the anti-competitive behaviors in so many little decisions stifle innovation in the space and prevent basic consumer choices. And the trend over the last 20 years has only been getting worse. The Apple Watch is more locked down than iPhones which are much more locked down than PCs. Just been a bad trend in computing that 80s Apple benefitted from in a way that today’s Apple doesn’t allow.
I do think it’s notable that (a) the iPod is what really pushed Apple off the brink and into the mainstream, setting them on the path that got them to be the biggest tech company in the world and (b) the iPod really took off once Windows users could buy it, and Apple would not have been able to do this if Microsoft had the same rules in place that Apple has over the iPhone and iPad.
There already is constant cleaning, the brain just can’t seem to keep up. Sleep is more efficient at clearance. People are working on making sleep more efficient. As you can imagine, military leading here.
Exactly, my kids are in elementary school and I’ve been talking with superintendents and high school principals. It’s straightforward to teach kids about the brain as a muscle and sleep as critical to rest and recovery to best power cognition. The glymphatic system gives a clear mechanism and yet I haven’t found many places where it’s being taught as a core part of how to best use your brain. Sleep is still considered a nice to have for brain performance, not a driver of working smarter.
Great points, I got my Ph.D. in neuroscience 20 years ago. There were disparate theories for why we sleep but no mechanistic description. Most of the research not specifically relevant to my own took 10-20 years to become influential. I’d be surprised if most textbooks for neuroscience-related fields being published today are including the glymphatic system, including psychology / psychiatry and medicine.
More efficient sleep is possible with ultrasound. But keep in mind that the glymphatic system seems to expand as other systems contract. The waves are tied to brain activity slowing down, can’t have one without the other. That said, could intersperse active times of the day with naps. But naps alone don’t seem sufficient as good sleep.
If you have any doubts about sleep quantity and quality, worth reading about the glymphatic nervous system, which is so newly discovered likely you didn’t learn about it in school.
In short it explains, mechanistically, why poor sleep affects daily cognition, mental health, and age-related declines. Robust scientific theories explain more of the evidence. The glymphatic nervous system explains why sleep is so key to surviving and thriving. Maiken Nedergaard will end up winning the Nobel for its discovery.
Misses the point of academia. Neural nets and back prop came from a very small niche at the intersection of computer science, psychology, and neuroscience. Working with limited resources is a feature, not a bug, of innovation.
I didn’t know that Rupert Murdoch had to become a U.S. citizen to own a U.S. newspaper. So precedents for old school media but of course the problem is new media not needing physical distribution that can be readily monitored.
I like the comparison: like a good pair of earphones for your eyes. That’s a nice succinct summary and gets to when and how the device operates best - when detaching from your surroundings helps you in some way. That marginal value every day isn’t for me but I can see how it could be for many, especially as the price drops over time.
If you have any doubts about sleep quantity and quality, worth reading about the glymphatic nervous system, which is so newly discovered likely you didn’t learn about it in school.
In short it explains, mechanistically, why poor sleep affects daily cognition, mental health, and age-related declines. Robust scientific theories explain more of the evidence. The glymphatic nervous system explains why sleep is so key to surviving and thriving. Maiken Nedergaard will end up winning the Nobel for its discovery.
I think Apple made the right trade-off here, but the external battery seems like the feature of the Vision Pro that will make us look back from the future and shake our heads.
Maybe I’m dense but I don’t really understand this jump to [shakes hands like Doc Brown] “the future”. We’re in Magic Leap’s future right now, how did the physics and battery constraints turn out for them?
How do you let people wearing VR goggles on their faces participate in videoconferences?
Me being dense again: Why is this a necessary use case? It seems pointlessly complicated when taking the thing off is easy or just make calls audio only. What will the Persona ever add?
Smartphones can do more, but are they radically different? Same look and feel, modestly better battery life. From v1 the camera is the biggest addition to what Jobs said - iPod, phone, browser. If AVP has the same incremental improvements, it will still be a bulky media device at best and I’ll still want to take it off for phone calls, work, and even taking photographs. Still cool, but not spatial computing.
Healthcare applications are also really interesting to me because those tend to be high value for 30-60 minutes. The Department of Veteran Affairs, for instance, is the largest health system in the U.S. and has a nationwide network of clinicians already using AR/VR applications.
What does the version in 2040 look like? We’re 17 years on from the first iPhone, and it’s still the same basic device. Incrementally better every year hasn’t meant any radical changes.
As a media consumption device it seems really cool, but I don’t see how the 10th or 20th generation version is relevant for daily life or work. Magic Leap spent over $4 Billion on the physics of high definition light onto the retina. There just doesn’t seem to be any way around the reality of the limitations in the AR approach. In 20 years it will still be a bulky headset with battery life limitations preventing the all-purpose computing device. Still seems really interesting for media consumption and even short duration, high value healthcare applications.
Thanks for this list, doesn’t seem like the pair of glasses that people are envisioning, more like iPhone X, lots of incremental improvements but not a major difference from v1 to v10 or even v15.
Can someone explain why they think the AVP version in 2034 will be light years ahead of v1? I see amazing engineering but not many places to shrink everything into a lightweight pair of glasses.