
Inventing the Future - astigsen
https://www.oculus.com/blog/inventing-the-future/
======
aaronaarzelbart
So much corporate communication is, in the end, just recruiting
advertisements.

These big companies Like Facebook and Amazon need to create gigantic free
universities that are incredibly appealing to attend, giving the corporation
the chance to cream off the most promising new employees.

~~~
danieldk
I am over thirty, so I am permitted to be cynical ;). While I completely agree
that AR and VR are the future and have many recreational and non-recreational
applications, Facebook's goal for VR is to further read user preferences (I
guess that they've wished to have eye tracking on Facebook for ages) and to
inject advertising in more subtle manners.

So, the question is: do you really want to work for Facebook (et al.) and get
the technology patent-locked to be used for reading of, influencing of, and
advertising to people? Or do you want to change the world for the common good?

It is worrying that so much talent gets 'lost' [1] to spying/advertising
companies because universities and non-profits cannot match or come close to
the (personal) benefits of working at such companies.

[1] I am not denying that the big tech companies have provided a lot of
progress.

~~~
humanrebar
> Or do you want to change the world for the common good?

Suggestions?

It seems to me that "lost" effort is a very normal state of things. Even if we
picked a worthy cause and worked cleverly and tirelessly for it, the our
successors could easily come in and trash our work.

It also seems to me that the real "change the world" technologies don't solve
problems but change our day-to-day lives: the printing press, cars, PCs,
radio, television, consumer-focused logistics (Wal-Mart, Amazon delivery),
vaccines, sanitation, running water, electricity, etc. Not all of these things
are good. Not all are bad. But when Silicon Valley people say "change the
world", they don't usually mean "work for (the next) Ford" or "work for (the
next) AT&T".

~~~
AstralStorm
These technologies do solve problems in a big way:

\- printing press solved the problem of mass distribution of written knowledge
and propaganda (By the way, invented by Chinese not Gutenberg but got lost in
political turmoil), also paper money

\- cars solved a problem of slow transport and having to care for fussy
animals

\- radio solved the problem of long range communication

\- vaccines solved the problem of certain recurring plagues

\- likewise sanitation

\- running water solved a problem of having to walk long distances especially
to irrigate crops (aqueducts, Babylonian invention)

\- electricity solved a problem of cheap transport of energy (as opposed to
coal for steam boilers)

Consumer focused logistics is much older than both Wal-Mart and Amazon. And
does not really solve a problem in as much as is an optimization over older
delivery methods.

------
spacetexas
How has he never heard "I want to invent the future", I thought that was
pretty much a staple. I've heard that in business consulting interviews for
years.

------
panic
_Imagine that your glasses replace all your electronic devices – phones, TVs,
computers, e-book readers, game consoles, the whole lot – with virtual
versions, in the process making them inexpensive and instantly upgradeable._

AR can replace these objects visually. But phones have touchscreens, game
consoles have controllers, even TVs have remotes -- how do you interact with
anything in this AR future?

~~~
AstralStorm
Sign language and gestures perhaps?

We're still quite some ways from making this reliable.

Here is a pithy clickbait title: "How the AR will turn us all into Italians"

------
musage
Abrash's Zen of Graphics Programming was my first programming book I really
loved.. still thanks, but no thanks.

> Well, Google has some new, ridiculous thing, they're marketing glasses which
> have a small computer on them. So you can be on the internet 24 hours a day,
> just what you want. It's a way of destroying people,

[http://grittv.org/?video=noam-chomsky-on-secret-trade-
deals-...](http://grittv.org/?video=noam-chomsky-on-secret-trade-deals-
killing-polio-workers-fighting-for-the-commons-in-turkey-the-heroism-of-
bradley-manning)

Call him an old fool for not liking your toy, but I think he has his
priorities straight, which not a lot of people can say for themselves.

> smart, motivated people who want to change the world

People who do things like invent penicillin don't talk about "changing the
world" or "inventing the future" all the time. Orwell enhanced our perspective
on a lot of things but I think he simply wanted to get it out of his system.
Kafka? Wanted his stuff burned. Konrad Zuse? Was painfully aware of the pacts
with the devil, something the "greats" of today just take as axiomatic. I
could go on. Yes, there were also a lot of great people totally full of
themselves, and they still were great. But generally, changing the world for
the better happens in hindsight. Rosa Parks didn't want to end segregation --
not that she didn't want it to end, my point is she was just sick of being
pushed around. That's where most meaningful change happens, humble and
concerned with the thing and not with the change, and _then_ some needy
assholes swoop in and take credit.

These engineers may be exceptional in their fields, but this and all it rubs
shoulders with, in the bigger scheme and considering really great people, both
big and small, is highly driven mediocrity, constantly touting its own horn.
Entertainment and ads, ads and entertainment. Everything's so awesome and
paradigm shifting, as new avenues to fill more landfills with old product are
created. People have specific questions, concerns, needs, desires. Those keep
getting ignored or twisted for profit, while more gimmicks and tools of
surveillance and control are pushed and rationalized. These days, everybody is
aligned with marketing.

I'm slightly sorry for being negative but only for those normal people who are
excited about this stuff. I don't want to pee on _your_ parade. Everybody has
their hobbies, but when people talk about the future and the world and the
human condition and whatnot they're in the territory of greats, and in this
case it's like bringing a footgun to a nuclear war.

At any rate, this isn't some guy starting out in his garage, he'll live and
prosper either way. To be honest, what triggered me mostly is how I cherished
that book, just because it was the first cool one I had. Now it doesn't feel
cool anymore. Otherwise I still have the above thoughts with plenty of stories
or comments, but I just roll my eyes. But this is a master of his field laying
it on _so very_ thickly.

------
crb
Did he hire the candidate?

~~~
CoolGuySteve
No, one of the 8 interviewers thought one of her whiteboard questions was
“correct but not clean enough” and another thought her design interview was
“too disorganized”.

------
anjc
I've read this twice and can't quite understand....why is this Oculus blog
post primarily about how great AR is and the challenges of it? I can see the
paragraphs about their research but is AR on Oculus' product roadmap?

~~~
bildung
_> why is this Oculus blog post primarily about how great AR is and the
challenges of it?_

It's an ad: "I wrote this because it was the most effective way I could think
of to reach out to those exceptional people and get them to consider whether
Oculus Research might be the most exciting, fulfilling, interesting place for
them to spend the next however many years."

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
It being an ad has nothing to do with whether they're working on AR or not.

They have tons of money, they know that AR will be an important battleground,
and AR is related to VR.

They would be incredibly foolish NOT to at least try to get into AR.

~~~
aaronaarzelbart
I dispute that AR either is, or will be important.

Beyond Pokémon Go of course, which was something of a rarity.

I just can't think of compelling use cases, and no one has ever showed one to
me that has impressed.

Mine craft on your coffee table? I think it's a silly curiosity. I want to get
OUT of my lounge room when gaming, not be stuck in it ... MOVE YOUR DIRTY
COFFEE CUPS OFF THE TABLE I WANT TO PLAY MINECRAFT ON IT... no one will ever
say.

~~~
hobofan
You mean having all the information you want proactively projected in you
field of view, instead of having to take out your phone and search for it
doesn't sound appealing to you?

I'm probably on the opposite side then. I worry that AR will be so appealing
that people will willingly give away their last shred of privacy.

~~~
aaronaarzelbart
This use case is saying "it's a monitor, up close".

Yet another screen doesn't excite me.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's a monitor, up close, that reacts in real-time to what's in front of you
and _augments it_ (hence the name) with additional information. Preferably in
a wearable format, so that you can have both your hands free to do the work.

------
Geee
Would it be easier to just completely replace our eyes and directly modulate
the optic nerve? From engineering point of view - that actually seems more
reasonable.

~~~
Certhas
No, almost certainly not. We can't even interface with nerve cells directly,
effectively to operate limbs. That's many orders of magnitude less information
than the optical nerve. Peripheral nerve interfaces that can actually get good
performance are quite a way off.

Plus, from what I remember there is a significant amount of preprocessing done
before the optic nerve. But we don't really know what exactly it is.

Edit: There actually are several projects that look at artificial retinas,
making use of most of the eyes nervous system and only replacing the outermost
layer:

[http://www.artificialretina.energy.gov/](http://www.artificialretina.energy.gov/)
[http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v16/n6/full/nmat4874.html](http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v16/n6/full/nmat4874.html)

~~~
Geee
Well, we can't focus light at will either. But yes, probably an artificial
retina of some sort will be a working solution.

