Stop Fighting over VR/AR/MR Nomenclature: The “Mass Market” Won’t Tolerate It
The other week Timoni West, Principal Designer at Unity Labs, tweeted:
Don’t fret. “Experiences” won’t be around for much longer for VR. Here’s why:
No one says, “I’m searching for something on the Internet.” People say, “Let me Google that” even if they aren’t using Google to search!
No one says, “I’ll look it up on my smartphone.” People say, “I’ll look it up on my [iPhone/Android]” or they say, “I’ll look it up on my phone” (and they never think landline!).
No one says, “I’m sending a photo on [Snapchat/Instagram].”. People say, “I’m [Snapchatting or Instagramming].”
No one says, “I’m posting to Twitter.” They say, “I’m tweeting.”
Over a half century ago people faced the new technology of the television. What terms would they use for it? They borrowed language from earlier radio technology. Just as you “tuned in” to a radio station, you suddenly now “tuned in” to a TV station. “Television” was later shortened to TV but we never integrated the technology with a verb (we don’t say we’re “televisioning”) but we say we are watching TV. Actually, we are more likely to say we are watching YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, etc.
VR/AR/MR taken individually or collectively is too long to stick…none will survive. If the goal of AR/VR is to replace our smartphones, we will not use the technical term of virtual reality or augmented reality to describe what we are doing. Instead, these terminologies will be replaced by a verb/product name, just as we’ve seen occur in the past.
In fact, using augmented/virtual reality won’t need any special term because it will become so seamlessly integrated into our lives it will be normal. We need special terms only when something is extraordinary not ordinary. That’s why we are grasping for terminology today. We are in the “extraordinary” early stages of AR/VR but that phase will soon pass. Of course, that does not solve our immediate need for 86ing “experience.” So what alternatives are currently vying for its replacement? Here are a few. You decide which you favor:
- Google is promoting “Daydream” by naming their AndroidVR Daydream. Just as people say “Android” not “Google smartphone,” they think they can brand VR too.
- My co-worker Darcy Nelson, suggests “gear-up” for a verb and “AVRA” (Alternate Virtual Reality Activity) as a great noun substitute for the drab “experiences.”
- Valve made an attempt to coin “Vive,” but I don’t think people are going to say that they are “Viving” especially if they don’t use that brand of equipment.
- Meta is exploring the concept of “touch to see”. In other words, when you touch something, it will unravel in front of you in the most natural way, unlocked from screens and inside of our minds. Soon, we may automatically associate the verb of ‘touching’ with ‘seeing’.
- My personal favorite is a verb, not a noun: “leaping.” Magic Leap uses the noun form but I think a verb is better. We use the word “culture” as a noun but that obscures that we do culture, we don’t have culture. Similarly, we do VR/AR, we don’t have it. So whatever we use, it should be a verb. And “leap” is great for now since what we are doing is leaping into another dimension, not stepping.
If you enjoyed this, please subscribe to allthingsvr’s weekly newsletter to receive updates on the top VR news, innovators and content :)
