Welcome to The Intertwixt. This is just the second issue of my new newsletter, and for anyone who’s new, welcome aboard. This is my little home for what I’ve been writing about, what I’ve been seeing and playing and reading, and where all these thoughts mingle and intertwine. Down below: thoughts on smart glasses, immersive theater productions, and an upcoming handheld game console. So much to think about! Come sit on a virtual bench with me and ponder for a bit.
Apple has a big event next week. I’m not going, but colleagues are. This is the expected launch of the new iPhones, and Apple Watches, and AirPods. But what really interests me are the new territories: gadgets to come, new interfaces. VR, AR, neural tech, smart glasses — devices that we aren’t all sure about adopting into our lives.
A new wave of smart glasses is coming
Meta Connect, a yearly developer conference where new VR, AR and AI tools are shown off, should be a nexus for that, and once again I’m heading to it. It’s a place where I’ve seen a lot of future ideas: prototype Orion AR glasses last year, VR and smart glasses other years. This time around, Meta looks likely to reveal a pair of possibly $800 glasses with a built-in display and a neural input wristband.
Who will these be for, and what will the pitch be? Tech for our eyes is a touchy subject. Some people don’t want goggles or displays or AI on their face. Others find the idea amazing. This is why it’s not super-mainstream yet. But someday, we might be wearing smart glasses as much as people wear smart watches now.
I thought about the problems in existing smart glasses this week, because I’ve been encountering them firsthand. On a family trip to see my in-laws in the UK this summer, I brought Meta Ray-Bans but didn’t find myself wearing them for more than a few hours. The battery life runs out fast, now. But Meta doesn’t have plans to replace or service smart glass batteries. Meta’s head of wearables, Alex Himel, told me it’s a problem Meta hopes to address in the future, but for now the solution is to just buy a new pair of glasses.
Smart glasses can’t be too expensive, and they can’t look too weird. And they have to be useful in a way everyday people who don’t follow tech can understand. Taking photos and video hands-free, and using them like headphones, and getting on-demand assistive AI make sense. What about being something we get big floating displays on, or can use our hands to interact with using taps and pinches and waves? How far do we want to go, and how quickly can the hardware road map take us there?
Wireless glasses with onboard displays are coming: Rokid Glasses, which I’ve just started testing, are small and look pretty normal. They’re a little more uncanny than Meta Ray-Bans, because hazy squares of waveguides on the glasses — which is where the monochrome displays get projected to — can reflect oddly at times. Also, the glasses float a bit more off my face than Ray-Bans.
Meta’s next-gen glasses, supposedly codenamed Hypernova, could enter the same space. Rokid Glasses are $600, and Meta’s could cost $800. And Google is expected to make its own smart glasses with hardware partners like Warby Parker and Samsung in the next year or more. Apple? They’re an unknown, but expect glasses someday from them too.
I’ll know more once Meta Connect happens, but in the meantime, I’m thinking a lot about how these glasses need better prescription support, better battery life, better AI tools, and better connection to our phones. Otherwise, they may be likely to stay a fringe product.
What really wowed me the most this week, though, were things I saw and did. An immersive theater production, and an upcoming handheld game console.
Viola’s Room: When is theater like a game?
Punchdrunk, the makers of the now-closed Sleep No More, have made a smaller installation in New York City at The Shed. Viola’s Room, which runs through October 19, is a headphone-driven walking experience that weaves a narrative fable timed to your movements through a mazelike dream space, where your next steps are guided by lights that activate and point the way. I experienced it alone, although you’re usually moving through with a group of people at a time.
Oh, and you also have to walk barefoot through the experience, sanitizing your feet before and after.
I was hypnotized by the experience. I found myself drifting, meditating, and reality melting. It also…felt like a video game. A walking simulator-type video game, one where the game directs or hints at your next moves, and you move and explore and wonder in a similar way to what this felt like in physical space. The Stanley Parable, for instance, or Firewatch.
Punchdrunk has an even more game-like sci-fi installation opening in London soon, Lander 23.
I think all the time about how immersive art can provide the template for ideas we’ll see again in a more tech-infused world. I’ve seen projects that made me think of VR, or AR, or even concepts that proponents of the metaverse kicked around. Viola’s Room reminded me of the magic of binding senses to place. The experience loops around a girl’s bedroom, or iterations of it, as we’re invited to look close, attend to details lit by tiny lights.
A book I’m reading right now, The Spell of the Sensuous, explores notions of our distancing from physical locations and nature, and how before written text, oral cultures would bind stories to specific places in a way that couldn’t be separated. I’ve been thinking about stories bound to places, or using storytelling to become deeper enmeshed in a sensation of the world around you. Viola’s Room came to me at the right time.
The ROG Xbox Ally X: a tiny peek playing Silksong
I also got a little look at the next Windows handheld game console coming in October, a new Asus ROG Ally that’s co-branded with Xbox and promises to run Microsoft games better than the half-baked way existing Windows game handhelds do.
All I got to try was a bit of Hollow Knight: Silksong, which finally arrived this week for tons of platforms. This isn’t a game to test a high-end game handheld with, exactly, but it let me appreciate the excellent controls and grips on the handheld. It’s big, though. We’re in an age of big gaming handhelds anyway now that the Switch 2 is here.
Okay, that’s all for now. See you next week, and hope you find inspiration in strange and magical places…or, just find a way to be calm. The New York Jets start up their season this weekend, so there goes my beautiful detachment from sports this winter.