Apple’s long awaited “Pro” virtual reality headset debuted on February 2nd, and already, videos are swarming the internet with footage of Vision Pro users interacting with their new toys.

One video showed a young man in an auto-driving Tesla truck wearing the Apple Pro and moving his hands around, moving different tabs in the empty air in front of him. The driver later noted that the video was meant to be a joke, but he did show that it would be possible to drive like this in such a vehicle.

Another showed a man wearing the headset while crossing the street, pausing at the corner to press an invisible button, looking like he was performing some strange, ancient type of dance while the filming observants tried to stifle their laughter.

So, within days of the Apple Pro’s (expensive) release, it is already being touted in public. And already there are safety (and existential) concerns.

“Apple’s user guide warns against using its headset while driving,” according to a piece from the BBC. “While Tesla says drivers should always ‘maintain control and responsibility for your vehicle,’ even when it is in autonomous mode.”

There has been significant blowback on X following the Vision Pro’s release as well. The videos above can be discomforting. It feels off. But why? Duncan Reyburn, a philosopher and technology critic, posted the following on X,

The reason so many of us are uncomfortable with the Plato’s Cave goggles is because when others put them on, the rest of us are instantly bathed in the glow of that unreality. None of us gets to totally escape AR zombie vision, even if we opt out.

Duncan Reyburn on X

Susannah Black Roberts, a journalist who has been critical of certain technologies that diminish human life, also posted in reference to a young man engaging with the Vision Pro on a subway:

This is so dark. What part of any of the below reminds you of working together to subdue the earth and improve the human condition? All of these use cases seem to involve being a) cut off from one’s body and the physical world b) cut off from other people and c) trivial or making life worse.

Susannah Black Roberts on X (twitter.com)

Will the Vision Pro make life more interesting and enhance human capacity or will it dull the real world and suck us all the more into a virtual fantasy? Given what we’ve seen so far, it seems like this new release from one of the world’s foremost technology companies is more of a fancy toy than a genuine tool. In the future, it might be the wealthiest among us who opt out of the virtual world, while the lower classes are kept inebriated by a steady diet of fakeness and dislocation.

Humans were made for more than that.