Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, has some thoughts on Apple's newly announced Vision Pro headset — and they're straight out of the movies: He's worried we're all going to be living like what's depicted in the Pixar film "WALL-E."
"That's the future we're driving towards — with everyone in the floating chairs, drinking their food out of straws, and constant 24/7 entertainment," Dorsey said in an interview this week with "Breaking Points" hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti on Monday
For Dorsey, envisioning a future with developing technology in augmented or virtual reality brought to mind Pixar's animated 2008 film, where humans are shown stationed in mobile, floating chairs — their bodies overweight and their eyes fixated on hovering screens before them.
In the interview, Dorsey shared his thoughts on companies developing augmented reality and virtual reality technologies. Just a week earlier, Apple announced its new Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, a strong competitor product to Meta's own line of virtual reality headsets.
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Dorsey said it's clear that cutting-edge headsets, like Apple's, have gaming potential, but he also said he's worried about the potentially isolating effects of the immersive technology.
"I think they have the propensity to be phenomenal for gaming. I think it's an obvious user interface evolution," Dorsey said, speaking about broader AR and VR advancements. But, he said, "I'm super-worried and concerned with how out-of-touch it might make people — and how it distances us even further."
Dorsey also likened recent AR and VR developments to a few science-fiction examples, including the sci-fi novels "Snow Crash," by Neal Stephenson, and author Ernest Cline's "Ready Player One," which was also made into a film.
"If you want to understand the future of any technology, just read science fiction," said Dorsey, who is currently CEO of payment service Square. "They're actually the roadmap writers."
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In "Snow Crash," the lead character bounces between a dystopian reality and a virtual world dubbed "the Metaverse" — Meta's own name for the virtual world the tech giant is building.
The "Ready Player One" plot also centers on a character, outfitted with a headset, traversing through a worldwide virtual game. "Now that we've seen it in a movie, people want to build it," Dorsey said in the interview.
Dorsey admitted the technology was only going to progress, but he said it will also necessitate conversations about people's relationships with tech — and with each other.
AR and VR "is going to happen," Dorsey said. "I'm skeptical about some of the benefits, and I hope we have an honest conversation about some of the harms around more and more social distancing."
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