Phil Smeeton's Tech Thinking Blog

Thinking about the philosophy of virtual reality I'd like us to consider assets like YouTube and in particular ASMR videos. Thinking back to the emergence of ASMR videos we could see that the ASMR artist was creating a virtual reality like experience for the user. So the ASMR videos presuppose in this case that we want VR to be like a version of reality. Other examples of VR like the metaverse promise a more abstract type of reality, a reality where the digital assets are more significant and an accurate simulation of the world around us has less emphasis. Are we seeing a shift in what we value?, possibly, although I think metaverse users value reality as much as non-metaverse users. The metaverse is perfect for users that have grown up in a digital world and value digitally created objects, we can see that the metaverse users will find the more digital and less simulated realities interesting and exciting. Another way of stating this is that the modern metaverse user values the di...

Everyone loves installing the latest app onto their phone, what wonderful functionality awaits the user? When thinking of an operating system like iOS, how many apps should ideally be installed on the device, simple enough question. Well the answer depends on what types of app are installed, for example the types of app we have installed slightly change the utility of the device. If we install apps to control our home we see the iPhone turning more into a remote control device. If the apps are mainly to order food we see the device becoming an ordering device. No problems, well everything is fine until we appreciate the user experience, does an iPhone really make a good controller for home devices? So the main takeaway is that the apps installed on a device like iPhone are influential in terms of  device user experience and therefore the types of apps you have installed matter. Another way of thinking about this is that you can make the iPone a better or worse user experience (in t...