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Innovation is overrated these days

I was talking about how innovation doesn’t drive anything anymore because we pretty much have everything already, capitalism’s end of the road, etc. Well, another example of that (HN comment):

My last company tried really hard to pitch AR/VR projects. Using headsets, phones even the Bose sunglasses. It was a huge struggle to find anything compelling to do with AR even when it worked. We ended up selling a few nifty marketing experiences and artsy installations but they were like 30 second experiences and not useful for anything. The tech "works", it’s just not very compelling.

Think about phone AR which works very smoothly and Apple/Google have been investing in hardware upgrades to enhance AR experiences yet it’s been 5 years since Pokemon Go and no one has figured out another interesting thing to do with it.

It’s not that we can’t innovate, it’s just that that innovation goes nowhere because human beings are completely satisfied, in so many ways. VR/AR don’t bring anything that we don’t already have. Decades, billions of dollars and we’re still facing laptops most of the day because those not only are enough, they’re just perfect for what we do.

Then we leave them on a desk, close them and go do human things around, in the sun maybe.

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