Jabes Twitter Musings - May 5th
$SNAPs Ticket to the Moon
In 2016 I published a post "Do Spectacles Mean We No Longer Have to Point at the Moon?" The general idea was that holding up a smartphone camera to capture the moment paradoxically took you out of the moment you were trying to capture.
Spectacles on the other hand enabled you to fully immerse yourself into the moment, thus creating a better photo because of the authenticity.
While its a fun piece to read (I reference phones at concerts!) I am not going to regurgitate it here. Instead, I am going to use it as a timestamp to emphasize that Snap is still investing in AR glasses 5 years later.
Why might they be investing still, with reportedly little traction to date? Why did they continue to pour money into Spectacles while they were struggling in the public markets?
My best guess is that Speigel's weekly screen time report is not too dissimilar from yours or mine. We are running out of hours in the day to give our eyes to the smartphone screen.
This is a scary thought until we realize that Spectacles are our ticket out of screen jail. The genie is out of the bottle when it comes to the internet. We are going to only become more connected, not less. If we assume this to be true, then wouldn't you at least want your hands back?
AR is a way to build ontop of the physical world. But that means we still need to experience the physical world. And the best way to experience the physical world is not viewing it through a small 12-inch rectangle.
AR won't replace smartphones but instead build on top of them. Much like each computing paradigm has done to date. Look at Pokemon Go, it doesn't work in a world where there is no smartphone.
But eventually as chips get smaller and computers get smarter, we are going to teach them to see. I think Speigel is onboard with this and truly believes glasses are the logical next step in the fractal world of computing.
And Spiegel isn't the only CEO circling these waters...
The good news for Snap is that they happen to be in pole position when it comes to mass AR adoption.
That is why 5 years from now I fully expect Spectacles to still be around. And if Snap connects, I think this is their ticket to the moon.
Cheers,
Jabe