Apples have changed the world.
From the fruit’s important role in the Bible to its health benefits to the technology company apples or Apple have impacted all of our lives in numerous ways.
But now Ben Shapiro is sounding the alarm over his fear that his new Apple product will destroy human civilization as we know it.
What is the Apple Vision Pro?
The Daily Wire editor emeritus Ben Shapiro recently tried out the brand-new Apple Vision Pro.
Ads and commercials have been almost unavoidable for the world’s first interactive augmented reality headset.
Apple describes its Vision Pro as a “spatial computer that blends digital content and apps into your physical space, and lets you navigate using your eyes, hands, and voice.”
That description is fairly broad and vague and not overly helpful.
Instead, check out Shapiro’s description of the new product in the review he wrote of the Apple Vision Pro for Creators.com.
“It takes the apps on your phone and places them in the world around you: you can pin them in various rooms in your home,” Shapiro wrote. “This essentially makes television extraneous; it allows you to post lists of groceries on your refrigerator; it allows you to speak with people in real-time while navigating the real world. The graphics are in the early stages, but they’re just as mind-boggling: one app called Encounter Dinosaurs introduces you into a prehistoric landscape, complete with dinosaurs. Remember how terrible 3D is? This is nothing like that. It’s totally immersive, and reacts to you.”
Shapiro described his experience with the Apple Vision Pro as “incredible,” and added he’s “never seen anything like it.”
He did say the mechanism is clunky and unwieldy, but he expects that to improve as Apple continues to modify the product.
And with a price-point of $3,500, Shapiro is one of the few Americans in the Biden economy who can afford an Apple Vision Pro.
However, like the prices of computers, cell phones, televisions, and other new technology before them, Shapiro believes the Apple Vision Pro’s price will come down to something more accessible over time.
And when it does, The Daily Wire co-founder believes the device, and the inevitable competitors who will emerge, will turn the world into something unrecognizable.
The loneliness of connectivity
According to Shapiro, this new technology will usher in the end of social life as we know it today.
Movies and video games will be completely immersive and interactive.
And so too will be interactions between humans, and that’s what frightens Shapiro.
“Imagine walking around, being able to access answers to any question by referring to ChatGPT — without anyone knowing you’re doing so,” Shapiro posed. “Every conversation becomes a supplemented conversation. Every job interview becomes a test of AI rather than a test of the human being. Every date becomes a date between two AI prompts. Or imagine a shared reality in which everyone wearing the technology sees the filters projected by others — so that normal human appearance disappears, corrected by the technology toward the unobtainable ideal. Imagine an even more dystopian world in which Apple or another major corporation controls what you see and hear by barring certain content or mandating certain language.”
Shapiro envisions a future where people walk around with vision pro headsets controlling their entire view of life and everything in it, all because it improves your entertainment offerings.
And given other tradeoffs humans have made over the years, it’s easy to see why Shapiro would jump to that conclusion.
Shapiro left his readers with this stark warning:
“We are opening a can of worms here,” Shapiro concluded. “And that can of worms can’t be closed. All of which means that even as our society throws away classical virtue, nothing is more necessary than its rapid reinstitution. If we advance technology and give people new capacities while ignoring the natural limitations of human beings, we are likely to meet with the ugly consequences of unknown unknowns.”
