Picture by Apple

The initial title of this post was “Let’s upgrade the illusion”, but that’s what Apple just did with the announcement of the Vision Pro. And I mean that in the positive sense, not as a criticism.

The quote “Let’s upgrade the illusion” comes from a keynote by Deepak Chopra during the December 2022 retreat of Nishith Desai Associates (NDA), a leading Legal & Tax Consulting company from India, with offices worldwide. It is in itself interesting to see a Legal & Tax Consulting company exclusively focused on new technologies like AI, XR, Nano, Bio, etc.

The event was hosted in NDA’s gorgeous campus “The Imaginarium”, a true infrastructure for imagination, pitched by the CEO as a “private infrastructure for the public good”. How cool is that?

But back to that keynote titled “The nature of reality, what is real?” – We jump in after 2 min:

Deepak kicks off by stating that everything is real if you are truly immersed in it: whatever you experience is an illusion. If everything is an illusion anyway, let’s then upgrade the illusion. To do so, says Deepak, ideas have to manifest. Therefore we need imagination. 

Imagination is about EVERY experience, all senses, not only visual, Deepak goes on. And then he really got me when he explained: 

“That what imagineS is consciousness, awareness, soul. That what imagineS has no form, no location in time or space, no boundary, and therefore is infinite. That what is imagineD has form, has location.”

This opens a field of possibilities, or better, a field of what can be imagined. 

I agree with Peter Hinssen when he says that the Vision Pro is not an iPhone moment but an Apple LISA moment:

“I don’t agree with those who say that the Apple Vision Pro launch is a new iPhone moment. I believe it’s an Apple Lisa moment. The Apple Lisa was a true milestone in the history of personal computing. Just like the Lisa, the Apple Vision Pro is a technological marvel that is too expensive (for now) to join the mainstream but is setting completely new standards for the industry.”

Back to Deepak. In a second talk at the same event about “The Future of Wellbeing”, he kindly notices that scientists measure experiences, and artists have experiences. That scientists identify with Quanta, and artists with Qualia. “Qualia is a unit of experience”. 

What if we would measure the success of the Vision Pro on its potential to dramatically increase our units of experience, expanding our notions and understandings of what is real.

This reminds me of David Chalmers’ book “REALITY+”, a philosophical masterpiece that basically states that any good illusion is indistinguishable from real. 

Let’s mix this with the insights of another philosopher Mark Coeckelbergh in his new book “Digital Technologies, Temporality, and the Politics of Co-Existence”, a mouthful, I know. Prof. Dr. Mark Coeckelbergh is a full Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology at the Philosophy of Department of the University of Vienna.

In this book, Coeckelbergh makes a plea for process philosophy: 

“Process philosophy shows a way out of what is today seen as overly deterministic thinking about technology and time, and clears the road for thinking about digital technologies and digital selves not as objects but as processes and becoming“

He also introduces the concepts of embodied technologies and “technoperformances.”

Performances emphasize the role of humans and the social but also bodily and kinetic character of our (co-)existence with digital technologies… As I have proposed in Moved by Machines and related work, the term performance can be used to conceptualize our dealings with technologies, including digital technologies. As we use digital technologies and are involved in technoperformances, we move and are choreographed, we act and are directed. To conceptualize the important role technologies and media play, we can say that we do not only use technologies in order to move, but that technologies also move us and direct us. The medium is not only the message but also the performance.  

This brings me to the excellent interview of Kent Bye with Andreea Ion Cojocura during SXSW 2023 titled “Defining Process-Relational Architecture with Andreea Ion CojoCaru: Spatial Design as a Participatory Improv Performance”

Andreea passionately talks about the potential of XR to instigate and discover emergent behaviours, about rubbery environments in continuous change, putting change at the heart of everything. And also about performance, like in art performance, a live creative process that takes you on an embodied, visceral journey with direct interaction with public. A process relational approach: me and the building (the environment) going dancing for a while. Love that – dancing with your spacial environment: where the end result is less important than the process, the experience itself. 

Ken Bye has btw very deep thoughts about the impact of AR/VR/XR on presence, immersive storytelling, and experiential design. Watch his May 2022 Brussels talk on YouTube here. I encourage you to watch the whole thing, it will reset your assumptions about virtual reality.

The core of his talk is about this quadrant, looking at AR/VR/XR in terms of four types of presences.

One could also say the four types of “illusions” of what is real and what creates and influences your learnings and behaviors.

Let”s get out of this rabbit hole with Andreea in her recent LinkedIn post:

“Apple DID debut a killer app. It’s embodied interaction *done well*. It doesn’t matter how simple it is. Experiencing space smoothlessly react to you in any form is exhilarating, addictive magic. The killer app is spatial UX as its own content. The novelty resides at the neural level, where a tiny delay or flicker makes a world of difference in how information is processed, and when and how the feeling of magic and awe is released.”

Besides the fact that the Vision Pro and anything related to it is just a gorgeous piece of technological perfection – “you can lick it” would Steve Jobs say – it deeply integrates spacial vision and embodied experience. That’s why I belief Apple just upgraded the illusion.

Update: I added a link to @BrettKing’s The Futurist Podcast on the Apple Vision Pro with @missmetaverse @Scobleizer, and @BrianRoemmele . This Podcast gives you a really good sense of the revolutionary aspects of the Apple Vision Pro. Enjoy!

Warmest