I'm an optimist and a sceptic at the same time. It’s not the best combination if you ask me.

This isn’t one of my usual rants; it’s a peek into the darker corners of the attention economy. Specifically, it concerns the current push into Augmented Reality (AR) and how we might f**k this one up to create shareholder value and make some nerds happy.

I’m not against augmentation; my life is better because of it. I wear shoes, clothes, and glasses and use technology for most of my work. These augmentations help me provide for my family and navigate reality more efficiently.

So, what am I getting at? Our world is already augmented. Should we add another layer? Why?

Let’s talk about the creature lurking there—what powers it and how AR solutions, proposed by Apple, Meta, and others, are trying to "augment the augmentation."

When I evaluate products, I usually use the Product Levels framework. I’ve attached a diagram below if you don’t know it.

Humans love to organise information into categories—boxes of things that look, feel, or smell the same - see above. In this context, product categories make sense. But there’s no point in discussing a product category without addressing the beneficiaries.

Without the customer segment, a product can’t build or define its category.

What’s a customer segment or a customer profile? I'm glad you asked. In short, a customer segment is a relevant collection of validated wants and needs. That’s the minimum required for a segment to exist; this collection is independent of any product. Products are usually built to cover those needs.

These needs and wants are shaped/sustained by context: mindset, time, and space. Context dictates everything, from how we perceive value to how products succeed or fail.

Now that we’ve set the stage, here’s my theory:

When combined with the attention economy, scientific advancements create the wrong incentives for technologies like AR. What do I mean by that?
It is an established belief that the thing that gets most of our attention must be valuable. People and organisations are making billions from this. Millions of people are alive today, wanting nothing more than attention.
Too many of them are doing extreme things to get that dopamine hit and the reward that comes with it.
We already see the effects of living in a world heavily influenced by algorithms built to manipulate and suck attention. We live in a connected world struggling with loneliness, lack of motivation, and purpose. We are hyper-sensitive, polarised and depressed.  

Yet here we are, on the verge of adding another layer between humans—a layer controlled by organisations looking to take over our attention.
A layer that will reduce, rather than enhance, our ability to focus and create.
This diverse world is the product of seeing the world differently.

Reality is processed individually, but we use stories to align the masses. Our minds run on stories, and stories are powerful and profitable.

Technology, politics, religion, and individuals always abuse this mechanism, spreading ideas to align and manage people's perceptions of reality.

It sounds heavy, but here’s why it matters: Introducing a new layer, like AR, between people could interfere with our most significant advantage as a species: creativity.

We thrive on focus and imagination. The ability to let our minds wander and extract ideas is unique. AR will disrupt this balance.

Vision, one of our most evolved senses, started about 600 million years ago. Most of what we see is out of focus, except for the small area of sharp vision in the fovea.
To put that in perspective, if you were to stretch your arm out and hold up your thumb, the area of your vision in focus (where details are sharp) would be about the size of your thumbnail at arm’s length. This is the diameter of our high-resolution focus.
Our brain stitches together the gaps, allowing us to focus only on what matters.

Sound, too, has a long evolutionary history. While light travels faster than sound, sounds often take priority in our brains, alerting us to environmental changes.

AR devices aim to overlay digital information onto this finely tuned system.
Our brains work overtime to process what’s important and ignore the rest.

By adding digital overlays, we risk overwhelming our senses and disrupting the balance we’ve evolved to maintain.

Every notification, pop-up, and digital distraction in AR could become a revenue stream in the attention economy. It’s easy to imagine a future cluttered with ads, notifications, and information we can live without.

Is that progress? Maybe. But are we thinking about the consequences?
Can we protect our attention from bad actors and hackers? We already know the answer to that question.

What about the people who don’t consent to these devices' capabilities but share the space with them?

I experienced Apple Vision Pro—from learning about it at WWDC to trying it out for 30 minutes. The product is fantastic: the build quality, the features, the sense of potential. For half an hour, I was transported to another world. I was blown away; I loved it. And that’s precisely why I hope they fail.

I hope Apple, Meta, and others will fail to create a mass-market category for AR. Because if they succeed, this technology will be pushed to the masses before we’ve thoroughly considered the externalities.

We’ve barely begun to understand the impact of being connected 24/7 through social media and devices. Our senses are already bombarded, and many of us are moving through life from one screen to another.

Do we agree that the attention economy must die so we can reclaim our time and focus?

There might be a silver lining. If we recognise the potential pitfalls now, we can steer AR development in a way that enhances lives without overwhelming them. AR could be perfect for specialised professionals.

But we must set boundaries. We must demand technologies that respect our humanity. For now, the failure of AR to reach the masses is to our benefit.

Can companies like Apple or Meta be trusted with this power? Perhaps some rocks are better left unturned.