What’s In Sight, Is Always In Mind.
As someone with a legitimate vision problem, let me introduce to you my latest tech-bro pet peeve: Snap Inc’s new Augmented Reality Spectacles. As if filters weren’t enough, the company has decided that they don’t want to miss out all the fun that Facebook and Google (and soon Apple) are having and have jumped on the augmented reality bandwagon. I might be an easy-going guy, but surely someone has to draw the line on this insanity! Some of us wear glasses by compulsion!
Jokes aside, while it is mildly annoying that technology is moving much faster than we’ve ever anticipated — I mean, AR glasses? — it’s also opening up a whole new dimension of opportunities for vision and perception of reality. But what even is Augmented Reality? AR is simply a composite view of reality, created by technology that enhances real world perceptual experience to replicate those perceptions virtually. It’s not a new phenomenon: Google has been experimenting with AR for a while now, implementing the technology into Google Maps to allow users to have an enhanced experience of their surrounding reality. But creating wearable glasses with tech? WE ARE HERE FOR IT. Companies like Snap Inc are allowing its users instant access to an enhanced reality where physical and virtual worlds are bridged. I find myself simultaneously annoyed and impressed at it.
To be fair, they’re all doing it but Snap Inc feels different. Unlike the others, which have gone on to grow into behemoth monopolies, Snap Inc has maintained their individuality, refusing acquisitions from the likes of Facebook (now Meta?). They were amongst the first companies to popularise filters — face distorting presets that allow users to edit their photographs and faces for social media — marking their first foray into some sort of augmented reality. The move was so genius that tech giant Instagram decided to directly copy-and-paste these features onto their own platform. Their justification? ‘This is how tech works.’
What really caught my attention about Snap Inc’s position on AR is that the company is different. While other social media platforms have metamorphosed in nature over the years of their existence, Snap Inc has steadily maintained their style: you take a picture and you send it. It’s simple. Unlike Instagram, where posts exist forever, Snap Inc has focused on this ‘snap chat’ experience, which is what makes their foray into AR even more significant. They’re relying on an exclusive set of creators to test and rate their Spectacles. The Spectacles themselves allow you to shoot videos and apply effects to them later. By creating these Spectacles, they’re not only emphasizing on their original business model of shooting and sending photos and videos, they’re entering the tech big leagues. And by marketing it only to an exclusive set of creators who are involved in AR, they’re maintaining the exclusivity of the product while simultaneously creating mass interest in it.
This trend isn’t going to fade. It may not catch up with all the hype it’s led up to, but if half of the FAANG is investing serious moolah into this, there’s absolutely no doubt that this is a sector that is going to boom. The 2010s saw a boom in digital reality through social media — maybe the 2020s will be the rise of augmented reality. Until then, can we figure out a way for people with real glasses to be involved? Thanks.
