Decode #18 Smart glasses, AI, niche memes and filter bubbles

Good afternoon! It's been an exciting few weeks for tech with Apple’s latest announcements.

It seems like everyone in the UK has been to see Beyoncé - but we saw the Arctic Monkeys instead. Subsequently we’ve fallen madly, deeply, hopelessly in love with the first song on their new album. Summer is here and it’s officially BOILING HOT so hopefully looking at this photo cools you down a bit. Enjoy 🪩!

The Digital Revolution: How AI is transforming the way we think and make decisions

By Luke Hodson

In the past few decades, we have witnessed an insane transformation in the way we live our lives, driven by the rapid pace of technological advancements. From the rise of electricity to the advent of the internet, these innovations have revolutionized the way we interact with the world around us. The latest addition to this list of tech shifts is AI, which is transforming the way we think and make decisions.

When electricity was invented, it replaced the need for physical labour and brought about a new era of industrialization. It allowed us to power machines, light up our homes, and communicate over long distances. It was the digitalisation of energy, making it possible to harness and distribute power in ways that were previously unimaginable. Electricity allows us to do more with less, and the same is true for AI.

How hyper niche meme accounts are emerging as the winners of Instagram

By Emily Evans

Context collapse is the name given to the phenomenon of multiple social or cultural groups that wouldn’t usually encounter each other ending up in the same space, like the internet. For an IRL example, it’s like when you invite people from 5 different friendship groups to your birthday and realise you’re going to spend the whole time making sure they all get along with each other. In both those scenarios, it’s hard for separate groups to connect with each other particularly well, because they’ve missed out on so much shared context that’s only relevant to each of the groups. This leads to misunderstanding and, as Venkatesh Rao puts in his compelling piece the internet of beefs, online public spaces are now ‘being slowly taken over by beef-only thinkers, as the global culture wars evolve into a stable, endemic, background societal condition of continuous conflict…the public internet is turning into the Internet of Beefs’. 

Is the metaverse having an identity crisis?

By Ed Hallam

It's been a couple of weeks now since Metaverse bashing headlines have been circulating, so we've taken a step back to understand why the Metaverse is having a PR nightmare…After the initial hype and excitement around the Metaverse, recent developments have raised questions about its viability and potential. Big companies, such as Disney, have repositioned their focus away from exploring the Metaverse, leading many to wonder whether it is dead.

AR and avoiding filter bubbles

By Hannah Seckendorf

The Vision Pro, both a technical marvel and source of endless memes, was introduced as Apple’s “first product you look through, not at.” This new interface you “look through” appears consistently across a series of indoor, largely private environments, its 2D windows hovering in space. This versatility makes the headset more or less environmentally-blind: it doesn’t adapt to its context beyond casting shadows, adjusting for ambient brightness, or acknowledging someone entering your field of view.

However, Apple is likely to have plans to move towards more environmental-responsiveness, given the 3D mapping capabilities built into the headset and the trajectory of other headsets in the industry. But for the moment it’s unclear how this technology will evolve to fit the more complex spaces that we share with others. The Vision Pro is depicted as a solitary experience: there is no shared AR layer between headsets. So what happens when we take the Vision Pro — or some similar headset of the future — outside, with others?

Smart glasses are coming. But will we ever embrace them as everyday wear?

By Magda Domagała

With the announcement of Apple Vision Pro, a future where smart glasses replace our phones just got a bit more real.

But once fully transparent head mounted displays get light enough and functional enough to venture outside of the walls of our homes or offices, will their form factor be compelling enough to become permanent fixtures on our faces?

Allow me to introduce you to the tech industry’s biggest dream — fully transparent AR glasses. A vision of a future where the physical and the digital merge into one. There’s no more screens, only a digital overlay on top of our physical world that lets us interact with it in ways previously unimaginable.

Thanks for reading!

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