JUNE 5, MONDAY

INNOVATION (2) HOW TO ACCEPT IT

So now I am trying to absorb these two new ways of functioning and relating to the everyday world.

My first and very intuitive question is to ask what can either of these two technologies do that improves on what I am already doing. Can I drive better with a Tesla, can I watch movies or do Facetime better with the Apple Vision Pro headset? Do I even need either one if I am doing just fine with what I‘ve already got? Do I need to change what I am already doing?

But, immediately I know that I am asking the wrong question, even as I am quite aware that these are the questions every older person like me, reluctant to change, asks. Why change when I am getting along just fine, thank you? We asked that about shifting to the iPhone, about shifting from enjoying our record collection and our advanced sound system, about shifting from taking photographs with a film Leica camera and techniques that have been standard for 100 years, about fooling with GPS when paper maps work just fine, about shifting from paper books to ebooks. As an old person I have resisted at every stage in the shift in technology. My sister refused on principle and great righteousness to get a computer, an iPhone, an iPad, to use the Internet, to write and receive emails and on and on. She closed off the new digital world and couldn‘t see that it put her at a disadvantage while cutting herself of from the new digital world and her more tech savvy family.

So back to the self driving Tesla which I can‘t afford. But I am really using price as a copout, because the price will drop and drop. My friends are much safer with their rear camera cars than I am, I know it. The question really is what advantages would the Tesla give me if price wasn‘t a concern. What if it can do things that I can‘t imagine, things I won‘t discover until I try it out.

For some reason I avoid that question, but that is certainly the question that the Apple Vision Pro virtual goggles evokes. That is the question with all of these technologies. What can I do with the computer that I couldn‘t do otherwise, what new experiences does the computer bring me. And it doesn‘t have to be many, if there are one or two things the computer and the Internet bring me that enrich my life that is enough. But to even discover this you have to open yourself up to the possibility that there is something out there that you haven‘t discovered yet that may transform your life. My wife Kathe was certain that the iPad I gave her for Christmas was just for me until she discovered a world of knitting patterns on the Internet. Knitting was her passion in life. She became totally hooked or browsing knitting patterns. And then sharing family photos also hooked her.

So this is the issue for me with the very expensive Apple Vision Pro virtual goggles. It promises to do things that I have never even thought of doing. But to find out if it is worth $3500 to me or even $500 I first have to explore it and find out if there is anything that it does that makes me lust for it. One of the things that I am guessing that it will do is to bring family and friends together in all kinds of ways. The pandemic brought Todd Mahy‘s widespread family together over Zoom and now with the pandemic gone, they still connect every Sunday over Zoom and I‘m guessing tha with these new goggles they could be even closer together and share even more of what is around them. And I‘m guessing that watching a film in 3D with the screen wrapping completely around me will be a much more intense way to look at films. And I‘m guessing that I will be able to travel in a much more immersive way without even leaving the house or I can combine with actual travel and share my trips in a way that I can‘t imagine doing now.

But these are just things that I can already do but in an expanded and more intense way. What will touch me the most are things that I have never thought of but will like to do when I discover them. I‘ve just thought of one. I have always wondered what it would be like to be at a lake 100 million years ago through some kind of time travel, observing the huge dinosaurs browsing on weeds out in the shallow waters. I‘ve thought of that again and again, thinking I was a little nuts and lost in fantasy. But in reading about the experiences of the first high tech science people allowed to try this out on Monday one of them mentioned a huge dinosaur actual entering the room where he was trying out the goggles and almost crowding him out. I can visit the dinosaur filled lake if buy those goggles for $3500. I am already starting to fantasize and to scheme. I don‘t need to use the goggles all day, I could use them once in a while. I could go in with four friends at less than $1000 apiece or eight friends at $500 apiece and we could take turns learning new ways of responding to the world.

And of course I don‘t know what else the goggles can do that will allow me to be alive in new ways.

To sum up. The key to new technology that offers a radical new way of dealing with the world is not to ask how it can marginally improve what I am already doing and whether it worth the slight improvement, but to be open to what it can do that will turn me on that I have never before dreamed of doing, what I have never even considered. (And of course, I want to avoid being scammed by false promises in the process, but I can‘t let fear of being scammed stop me either.)