I had the privilege and pleasure of talking about the pitfalls of Virtual Reality (VR) — especially the Apple Vision Pro — with Dr. Robert Marks, the Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University, and director of the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Discovery Institute in Seattle.
Back in the day, Dr. Marks worked with Dr. Thomas Furness, who is considered the father of Virtual Reality. So Dr. Marks is a leading authority on the subject, and his questions showed the depth and wisdom gained through decades of experience.
You can listen to our conversation in two short but richly informative podcast episodes. While Apple Vision Pro is the starting point, we discuss technology addiction, false vs. true spirituality, VR pornography, Artificial Intelligence and the techno-cults forming around AI, and much more. Here are the episodes:
- Part 1: “Doug Smith on The Pitfalls of Virtual Reality (VR)“
- Part 2: “How to Rise Above Addictive Technologies to Find Real Freedom“
Dr. Marks asked me to summarize our conversation, and here’s a lightly edited version what I said:
The Vision Pro is another example of big technology companies who do not care for what is actually good for us. They ultimately only care about what’s good for their bottom line. They’re totally willing to make profit at our expense. They’re happy for us to be addicted to their products, because they win either way.
What I would encourage people to take away would be that they need to be more intentional with their lives than the companies who are spending billions of dollars and millions of hours to get them to be unintentional. We need to take our lives back from these intentionally addictive technologies and live the life that God has called us to live. When we do that, we are going to experience real vision, real connection, real control, real spirituality, not the false versions that Apple is selling in Vision Pro.
I’d love to hear your thoughts after you listen.