Why We Should Be Worried About Apple Vision Pro

On the 5th of July 2016, Nintendo launched what would become one of the most popular mobile games of all time: Pokémon Go. The game was an instant cultural phenomenon, breaking multiple world records in its first month. After just 20 days, it passed over a hundred million dollars in revenue, and by the end of the year, it had been downloaded more than 260 million times. Its hook was a burgeoning technology in the mobile realm called augmented reality. Using your phone, the game projected virtual Pokémon into your real-life environments. You might turn a corner and run into a wild Jigglypuff, or visit the library and see Pikachu hanging out there. The game even transformed actual locations into gyms where players could battle each other and PokéStops where they could collect items.

This was more than just a gimmick. Through the power of AR, players were transported directly into their favorite fictional world, blurring the boundaries between game and reality, and fans loved it. But as Pokémon Go was smashing records, a darker side was quickly emerging. Immediately following its release, hundreds of Pokémon Go-related accidents were reported around the globe. Many of these were traffic accidents involving players who were distracted by the game's immersive AR technology. In fact, a study by Purdue University found that in just one county of Indiana, there was a 26.5 percent increase in accidents at intersections within 100 meters of PokéStops. These accidents accounted for 31 injuries and two deaths across the United States.

Other players injured themselves after being led by the game into dangerous or otherwise off-limit areas. In one such case, two men in San Diego were hospitalized after climbing through a fence and falling down an unstable cliffside. Pokémon Go was so absorbing that not only did it inadvertently cause an international surge in traffic accidents, but it also seemed to be motivating players to break the law and risk their own well-being in order to catch them all. Thankfully, incidents have dropped significantly due to their peak in 2016. But Pokémon Go-related accidents continue to be a problem. As recently as August of 2022, two people in Argentina were killed when a man lost control of his vehicle while playing the game. In total, 26 people have died in the pursuit of all things Pokémon.

This is the inherent danger with blurring the lines between reality and virtual reality, and that's not even the worst of it all. Smartphones have long aspired to break down the barriers between users and the digital realm. For the most part, this has been successful, so much so that people view their smartphones as an extension of themselves. In a sense, technology has become a part of us. Augmented reality takes this idea to the next level by fully merging the digital with the physical. It works by overlaying computer-generated sensory information on top of a person's environment in real time. This might include anything from a heads-up display feeding users information to full-on computer-generated characters that appear as if they're standing right in front of you.

Unlike virtual reality, which creates a totally different artificial environment, AR allows us to stay grounded in the real world, merely adding digital information as a secondary facade. Currently, this technology is mostly used by smartphones, but it's not hard to imagine a future in which wearables become dominant. Products like Google Glass have already been trying to do this since 2013, and although those initial attempts proved to be less than successful, tech companies haven't given up. Apple is predicted to launch their own AR headset as early as 2023. As if that weren't enough, earlier this year, Mojo Vision revealed a working prototype of an augmented reality contact lens. Less obtrusive than glasses and nearly invisible, devices like these could one day become as ubiquitous as smartphones.

Although not yet available to the public, Mojo has demonstrated that this technology isn't a thing of the future; it's already here. The potential applications of AR are essentially limitless. Imagine looking around a grocery store and...