AR is Aural
In Dont Look Back, D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary following Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour of England, Dylan uses a neat little communication tool. When he’s engaged and emboldened, like when he dresses down a Time reporter while surrounded by his sycophants, he’s bare-eyed. But when he’s feeling reclusive, like trying to avoid his dogged fans, he slides on a pair of opaque black Ray Bans.
The eyes being windows to the soul and all, hiding your eyes can be a protection mechanism.
But it can also be a liability; In a business handshake, a romantic embrace, or playing peek-a-boo with an infant eliminating eye contact undermines trust and compromises connection. If you don’t need to be shielded from the bright light of fame it’s best to keep the shades off .
Which is why it’s hard to image a dancing hotdog popping up in the lenses of your Generation II Spectacles is what’s going to get us to the next level of AR adoption. (They’ll be a fun toy, though)
When Google released Glass, they understood that AR is only useful if it’s additive, not subtractive. Unfortunately, the clear lenses made you look like you were wearing orthodontic headgear for your eyes.
Or put another way: it’s really, really hard to make an AR device both elegant and effective.
Enter Apple’s little audio product. AirPods are, for now, best way to be plugged in and still present. They are aural AR.
Augmented Reality is usually thought of as a visual tool, but any tool that heightens your experience of the world you’re in is AR. That might as well start in the ear.
With AirPods, you have access to all the information Siri can find for you (yes, a work in progress) and still interact with the world, physically and emotionally, as you always have.
There is no reason a device can’t have asymmetric inputs and outputs. Looking ahead, throw a camera in each AirPod for video capture, and Siri will be telling you what you’re eating, what species that tree is and who that person in front of you is.
Tech twitter loves AirPods, saying they are “indispensable”, “perfect” and the “Best device Apple has made since the iPhone. Period.” Seamless integration of the individual tech ecosystem has always been Apple’s game. AirPods and HomePod mean your aural AR experience doesn’t change from living room to car to desk.
When the time comes, Apple can leverage this integration across whatever ecosystem of visual devices they develop. I’m hoping for something akin to Jude Law’s contact lens in Spy.
The more likely first steps will come back to whatever Google, Snap and others are cooking up in the glasses realm. As the ecosystem gets more powerful, it might be acceptable, or even expected, to wear headgear across your eyes.
But until then, we can keep the internet off our faces and only put on shades when we want to keep Joan Baez from seducing us.
