Matthew Ball has a good long post about the history of terms that attempt to capture the concept of 3D experiences in computing -- cyberspace, augmented reality, mirror worlds, and so on (and on). While "spatial computing" is currently the term in vogue due to the Apple Vision Pro and the marketing juggernaut that is Apple -- which describes the headset as "Apple's first spatial computer" -- Matt correctly points out that it's actually from the early 90s and Dr. Bob Jacobson, founder of an early VR startup called Worldesign.
As I wrote in my book, Worldesign and Neal Stephenson were literally sharing office space back then:
Shortly after Snow Crash was published, Avi Bar-Zeev tells me that Stephenson, a Seattle resident himself, would often hang out in the Worldesign office, located above an antique furniture store in the Ballard neighborhood...
Bob Jacobson, founder and CEO of Worldesign, warmly recalls meeting Neal Stephenson during his time running the startup, but remembers it somewhat differently. In Jacobson’s telling, his company was already planning to build something similar to the Metaverse, and Stephenson’s vision helped catalyze their plans.
“We invited Neal because Snow Crash had just come out, and we needed a new dinner speaker,” Jacobson tells me now. “He obliged, and I was knocked over [by what he described].”
In the 1990s, Jacobson’s company created virtual world simulation projects for major organizations including Fiat and the U.S. Department of Defense. As for something like the Metaverse, says Jacobson: “We already had it in mind. The reason I brought [Stephenson] along was he had envisioned it [in Snow Crash].”
Matt concludes by suggesting that "spatial computing" is the better term to use now, since it has as long a history as "the Metaverse", but is something we can experience now:
This is, perhaps the one final challenge with the term - it describes more of an end state than a transition... The Metaverse is usually spoken about as something we one day reach, yet isn’t here today, and thus cannot be experienced. Spatial computing, though, well that’s been here since the day Snow Crash was published.
The "end state" conception is definitely problematic. It's why my focus is mainly on metaverse platforms. Why talk about hypothetical future versions of the Internet when we already have very popular, very successful platforms like Roblox and Fortnite which have most or nearly all the essential attributes of the Metaverse described in Snow Crash, and continue to grow in scale? It's unlikely any future of spatial computing will emerge apart from them -- and far more likely to emerge from them.
By contrast, while spatial computing has historical longevity as a term, my guess is it's now inextricably synonymous with Apple Vision Pro. If it remains a niche device -- and it almost certainly will be a niche for at least the next five-ten years -- it'll lose its luster the same way "the Metaverse" was unfairly tarnished by Meta's awkward co-optation. But then again, it's a better bet that Apple will succeed where Meta floundered.
As for Matt, the upcoming revised version of his book The Metaverse tells you where he's coming from:
Where once the subtitle was "And How It Will Revolutionize Everything", it's now... The Metaverse: Building the Spatial Internet.
> Will We Want "Spatial Computing" More Than "The Metaverse"?
If you mean "Will more people buy an Apple Vision Pro for 3500+ USD than people play free-to-play metaverse apps?" then the answer is pretty obvious.
If you mean "Will there be more hype about 'Spatial Computing' than about 'the Metaverse'?" then I'd also say "no", because at its core "spatial computing" describes 3D user interfaces, thus, it is about as sexy as graphical user interfaces with mouse pointers or user interfaces based on multitouch gestures have been when they were still novel. On the other hand, concepts like "the Metaverse", "the Matrix", "the Holodeck", "the feelies" (in "Brave New World"), etc. have been conceived specifically to excite the imagination of a sci-fi audience, which means that they are ideal fodder for the kind of fantasies that can support hype about a future technology.
Posted by: Martin K. | Thursday, February 08, 2024 at 04:21 PM