We need technology that is less immersive, not more

"Profit" is just the difference between what people are willing to pay for a service and the full cost of what it takes to provide that service (which itself is defined as how much the different suppliers could be making doing other stuff). Business owners are rewarded for shifting resources away from activities that consumers don't value highly (as evidenced by their willingness to pay for them) to ones that they do. If you feel that businesses are focusing on the wrong things, spend your money differently.

I appreciate the comment, especially with the example with the hypothetical brain surgeon. I've also anecdotally known people personally who have become accomplished in academic research, who preferred easy-to-access entertainment to decompress after a difficult day of work. So, work on entertainment does have important value to many people.

But at the same time, on a broader point, the author has a compelling general idea that it can be helpful to question how you spend your time away from work. I've spoken with people—and have personally experienced—a satisfaction from physical hobbies outside of computer interaction. Rock climbing is especially popular among the people I know (even those with busy schedules), along with martial arts such as BJJ or judo. I also know a couple people (one personally, and another impersonally through his biography as a novelist named "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running") whose life enjoyment is closely tied to their passion for long-distance running.

Outside of physical activity, other low-technology ways of entertainment will remain important. Reading books, especially classical ones, can improve one's writing. I've also read about chess players who have attributed their strong ability to plan ahead—in life and martial arts—to their passion for the game. I've additionally known people whose interests in music performance and production led them to develop good friendships with others. Naturally, this can apply to immersive technology: video streaming or high-graphics video games also have the ability to inspire people in their day-to-day life, or help people make meaningful connections.

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My source of skepticism is therefore not with the people working toward on nicer-looking graphics, as highlighted by the author, but rather with the people who apply psychology in video game design to make certain video games addictive—especially those with free-to-play models, which employ gameplay loops to keep people grinding for rewards even when the game stops feeling fun. I think the author is focusing on the wrong part of the industry: certain game designers have had a larger role with making certain video games have negative effects, as evidenced by somewhat-recent successful lawsuits against game companies that employed loot boxes and overly-easy ways to make in-game purchases in certain games targeted toward children.

Video games and streaming can absolutely have a healthy place in one's life—especially productions created for the love of the art instead of primarily for the money—but only in moderation and not at the excessive expense of other ways to spend one's free time. Graphics development isn't a problem at all, but I do think many people's lives can become richer if they also give passions that don't require a personal computing device a strong chance.

it is easy to agree with this. however, the problem is most people just don't care and/or are lazy to do something more meaningful. and there is nothing inherently wrong with that.

Working on my own kind of metaverse I've grappled with this issue, and that is why I hope to use it to improve physical space endeavors as opposed to replacing them. This really started for me in two places: the newer one was when I pitched to the department of education for a grant program a software I called Meta-Education Environment for Simulation and Gaming (MEESG), aimed particularly at assisting in training of high-risk vocations (such as high voltage-systems repair)... but after I thought about it, I realized that the earlier inspiration was the VBS simulation I trained in the military and how I noticed the benefits directly (later leading to many hours of Arma2/Arma3 playtime, the civilian version of VBS).

So the main fight I see in the future is those who think (similar to the article) all this immersion effort is vapid and superficial. I don't think it is, and for more than just training, but also for rapid iteration in a simulated physical space that doesn't waste actual physical resources until a better product is developed. Ergo, I feel there is hidden value in the virtual space yet untapped in the wider market for combining fun and relaxation with teaching valuable things about the real world.

Just for example, I have been adding my local flora/fauna and edibility properties and medicial properties to one of my gameworlds recently, which could help me accelerate my learning of that particular real world thing but also make the gameworld more fun and interactive.

All jobs have a repetitive aspect, exactly because we want experts in those jobs to do the job. But for the experts the work may often be boring and repetitive.

I am pretty sure most of a surgeon's surgeries are NOT exhilarating experiences for them, but rather routine activities. Similarly for lawyers drafting contracts, software engineers developing web backends, construction workers building houses, or singers singing their repertoire.

Not all of these jobs can be automated, so some routine will always exist.