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From 7 years ago, a funny/spoof video on gig culture, AR etc. https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs
As with a lot of these dystopian predictions, I think it falls apart at the complete lack of ad blockers.
In what sense would AR ads be inescapable? I have no plan to ever buy one of these headsets. If the streets of London became Minority Report-esque e.g. holographic loud projections, I can just move five or ten miles down the road to somewhere slightly less urban. It'd be significantly less expensive too. I mean, almost all tube station adverts are still just paper billboards, clearly something is preventing them from…
If AR glasses become the only device we have (no macs or iPhones), then these ads could be everywhere. Almost like modern tech billboards. Obviously you can just not buy the product, but when everyone else has one it will be hard to do that. Imagine not owning a smartphone right now (a quick example).
The more savvy users will have a better experience, exerting more control using free (or crowd-funded) tools which block ads. The mainstream companies will continue to make the computing experience an ad-filled privacy nightmare for everyone else.
Also like now is the "Wargames" aspect of it - the computing landscape is already such an ad-filled privacy nightmare that, "The only winning move is not to play".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine not owning a smartphone right now I don't, and life goes on as before
In the US, I think you can still survive fine without a smartphone, although it becoming more difficult. During the pandemic we had to install an app to check our kid into preschool. Ridiculous, but I guess you could argue I could have made a stink or switched preshools. Asia and European sound a lot more far gone in this area though and I feel like the days are numbered here.
As a German: Why? All scam-app checkins during the pandemic were also doable via paper (I refused to install the damn app), pretty much everything I can do on my phone, I can also do by paper (which I have to for my health insurance, damn TK is not only the most digitally progressive health insurance, they also seem to be the only app existing on Android with an almost uncircumventable root detection). The only exception would be my bank, but that’s because I chose a neobank which requires a smartphone to even sign up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would adblock be less effective on AR glasses than it is on my phone?
adblock assumes a world where the web is an actual supported first-class medium of society I think it's pretty clear where that trajectory is already headed. Proprietary Apps are not the web, and your adblock browser extensions are irrelevant when everything relevant is an App. FTR this is not the future I want, it's just the future I see. We need a new and better Mozilla analog to champion the web browser and push t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If AR glasses become the only device we have (no macs or iPhones), then these ads could be everywhere. Almost like modern tech billboards. Obviously you can just not buy the product, but when everyone else has one it will be hard to do that. Imagine not owning a smartphone right now (a quick example).
The idea that everyone is going to walk around outside constantly using a headset is not a version of reality that I ever think will happen. There are enough people who like, enjoy breathing normal air and seeing plants. Maybe if it becomes a brain implant at some point. I hope to be long gone before then.
This has been a big fear of mine since I started studying CS. Implants that are still not fully proven safe, but create a massive productivity gain. This might make the choice to get a sketchy implant or be unemployed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth noting this kind of thing is why the Apple headset OS is designed specifically to keep eye tracking information to an OS-only layer, at least outside of traditional VR style full immersion apps.
How many times are we going to fall for this? It's all fun and games until Apple is facing a bad quarter which is not if but when. And even if they don't share it- they can still use it for selling ads on their platform.
In what sense would AR ads be inescapable? I have no plan to ever buy one of these headsets. If the streets of London became Minority Report-esque e.g. holographic loud projections, I can just move five or ten miles down the road to somewhere slightly less urban. It'd be significantly less expensive too. I mean, almost all tube station adverts are still just paper billboards, clearly something is preventing them from…
Just wait until you can't see a restaurant's menu, in-flight announcements, traffic advisories, etc. The pandemic opened the door to making a piece of technology a mandatory requirement to participate in society. It used to be possible to live without a smartphone, now you really need to be able to read and produce QR codes¹. Why couldn't the same thing happen with AR, considering how expensive it is for governments…
I used one QR menu during coronavirus and then started going elsewhere. To be honest restaurants during the pandemic were awful anyway, far more fun to just have friends over for dinner.
I have a fairly varied social life, if anything I probably drink too much. This doesn't match up with reality to me.
Unavoidable means just that - cannot be avoided. To avoid using QR codes doesn't even involve trying.
All those dystopian forecasts omit one important thing. Habituation. Humans are quite flexible and we will simply get used to it. AR ads will be as inescapable (and imperceptible) as banners today (both physical and digital alike). And after some time AR will be as immersive and exciting as TV today. Assuming it will take off at all.
Considering the incredible and rising popularity of ad-blockers and ad-free streaming, clearly decades of "habituation" hasn't diminished the desire to remove ads from our sight.
I recall when baseball first started showing digital ads along the field wall -- at first they specifically made it look like static images, and would only swap out the digital ads during inning breaks (so you couldn't tell at a glance that it wasn't a static physical banner).
All those dystopian forecasts omit one important thing. Habituation. Humans are quite flexible and we will simply get used to it. AR ads will be as inescapable (and imperceptible) as banners today (both physical and digital alike). And after some time AR will be as immersive and exciting as TV today. Assuming it will take off at all.
Considering the incredible and rising popularity of ad-blockers and ad-free streaming, clearly decades of "habituation" hasn't diminished the desire to remove ads from our sight.
Turns out, a lot. Worse yet, we've been habituated into choosing platforms we don't control and taking corporate interests for granted. Once Apple and Microsoft realized that, it became open season for ad nagging. Constant service pop-ups, advertisements for music streaming, notifications begging you to try a different browser, dishonestly promoted search results and data-collection on app launch have all become the norm. We're fully habituated, with the illusion that we "control" things by paying extra for nicer looking advertisements.
All those dystopian forecasts omit one important thing. Habituation. Humans are quite flexible and we will simply get used to it. AR ads will be as inescapable (and imperceptible) as banners today (both physical and digital alike). And after some time AR will be as immersive and exciting as TV today. Assuming it will take off at all.