Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by wpietri 2830 days ago
I think that's very dangerous. A lot of the tech that worked out only did so because the people working on it put users first, not technology first.

A classic example here is Apple. They did not make the first personal computer, the first MP3 player, or the first smartphone. Those were made by people focused on the tech. Instead, Apple took mostly-existing tech and really focused on delivering value to users.

I think a user-first attitude is important even when making consumer gadgets. But a student-first focus is vital for education. There are a zillion examples of educational tools and methods inflicted upon kids not because they were better for students, but because somebody wanted to prove something.
1 comments
shafyy 2830 days ago
Yes sure I agree. But if you've spent time with some VR headsets (especially Oculus Go) you know that it feels like magic. And it enables things that without this tech weren't possible before. Sure, it has a long way to go, but I believe that there's path.

I'm sure the engineers at Apple also looked at the tech and were like "holy shit, this enables us to do crazy stuff".

link
wpietri 2829 days ago
I do know that it feels like magic. But then, so did the 90s wave of VR. I also agree that it in theory enables new things.

But in practice, nobody has demonstrated that those new things deliver more value. Again, consider 90s VR. Or how people were sure that home computers were the coming thing starting in 1970 (and probably earlier). But they didn't really become particularly useful or common until the arrival of the web browser. [1]

The engineers at jetpack and flying car and humaniform robot companies also said "Holy shit, imagine what we can do." We could look at the plans for manned space travel of 1940-1980, none of which panned out. Heck, we could look at 3D movies and TV, which have flopped repeatedly. And even at Apple there were plenty of times that they said that and were wrong. [2]

I'm really not trying to rain on your parade here. I'm happy to admit that this could really be the time VR takes off. But I'd love it if more VR proponents could accept that "feels like magic" is a novelty effect; that the history of 3D "feels like magic" products turning into giant flops goes back at least 150 years; and that this could be just another one of those things that ends up like 3D TV or Smellovision.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_computer#Reception_and_so...

[2] https://blog.musicmagpie.co.uk/2017/09/06/7-apple-products-t...

link