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 look into the darker corners of the attention economy. Specifically, it's about Augmented Reality (AR) and how we might f*ck this one up for the sake of creating some shareholder value and perhaps making some nerds happy.

Our modern world is already augmented.
We've given names to people and labels to most things we know exist.
We've got language and the ability to process abstract concepts.
We have definitions, formulas, norms, and laws. We need those to understand, communicate, solve problems, build, and navigate societies and events.

Let's talk about the creature lurking in the attic.

Science and technology make many things possible these days, and the tech industry constantly looks for opportunities to package discoveries into products and services.

Now that we've brought products into the conversation let's talk about them.

As some of you know, when I write about products, I examine them through the Product Levels framework. If you're unfamiliar with it, I've attached an image below.

Humans organise information in categories, placing items in boxes with others that look, feel, or smell the same. That's how we operate. In this context, a product category alone doesn't say much.

Why? Because a product can't build, define, or influence a category without a customer segment.

What's a customer segment? I'm glad you asked.
In short, it's a sensible collection of validated wants and needs. That's the foundation, the minimum required for a segment to exist. This set of wants and needs can exist without a solution, without a product to address them.

These collections are particular to individuals and groups and highly sensitive to context. If my theory holds, customer segments are not invented; they are discovered.
The main innovation here is the ability to articulate the consumer's needs through analysis and empathy—a human trait that has been abused for some time now. Another story, another time.

The success of a product depends on how well the solution they deliver validates those wants and needs and, of course, how well they address them.

It was a long introduction, but I needed the frame.

When it comes to AR, my theory is that technological advancements, in the context of the attention economy, make for a risky bet and a hard push.

Augmented Reality, as a technology, I would argue, is the most invasive of all. We will talk about Neuralink another time.

What do I mean by invasive?

We humans are bad at multitasking, but that's also good news.

One of our main advantages as a species is the ability to imagine things and hyper-focus—a combination with a valuable output: creativity.

Something that machines can't do. Yet.

Our ability to interrupt a thought and let our minds wander is both a blessing and a curse.

Now, what do the above words have to do with AR? Everything.

The evolution of vision, a feature most of us enjoy today, started approximately 600 million years ago.

Only a tiny part of our vision is in focus at any moment. This focused area, called the fovea, makes up less than 1% of the retina but is responsible for the sharp, detailed sight we rely on. The rest of our vision, mainly in the periphery, is much less sharp and more attuned to detecting motion and changes in light. That's because the fovea is packed with cone cells for clarity and colour, while the peripheral areas rely on rod cells, which are better in low light but offer less detail.

Our brain fills in the gaps by rapidly moving our eyes to stitch together a broader, clearer picture, focusing on what matters while keeping the rest in check.

AR devices aim to overlay digital information onto our real-world view. But consider this: our brains are already working overtime to process visual information, focusing on what matters and filtering out the rest. By adding artificial overlays directly into our field of vision, we risk overwhelming our senses and disrupting the delicate balance our brains have evolved to maintain.

In the attention economy, every notification, every pop-up, every digital distraction is a potential revenue stream for someone. AR has the potential to bring these distractions even closer, right into our eyes. It's not hard to imagine a future where our visual space is cluttered with ads, notifications, and data we didn't ask for or didn't want to share.

We are paving the way for an even more intrusive form of advertising and data collection, all in the name of innovation and shareholder value. Is that progress? Maybe, but did anyone seriously examine the externalities related to these solutions?

I've experienced Apple Vision Pro, as a whole—from becoming aware of its existence at WWDC to booking the demo in the Apple Store in London.

It was amazing—the build quality, the thought behind the features, the delivery, and everything else.

This is why I hope they fail to create a category for this product, or if they do, it becomes a tool for very special use cases, and they never push this to the masses.

We barely started to become aware of the externalities of being connected 24/7 to the internet and absorbing the world through social media.

Do we agree that the attention economy must also die so we can get our time back?

There may be a silver lining. If we recognise the potential pitfalls now, we can steer the development of AR in a direction that enhances our lives without overwhelming them.
We might reclaim our focus by setting boundaries and demanding technology that respects our humanity.

With every presentation, organisations like Apple, Meta, and even new startups appear to be getting closer to breaking the spell.
For now, their failure is our benefit. Can they be trusted in wielding the power their resources can acquire? Will they be able to break the spell? 


Or some rocks should be left unturned.