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Apple Vision Pro takes us one step closer to the nightmarish future shown in WALL-E
Apple has launched its highly anticipated Vision Pro headset this month but clips that have since emerged draw worrying comparisons to the future depicted in Pixars WALL-E.
OPINION At its heart, the 2008 movie WALL-E may center on the love story between two robots in the far-flung future but the visionary film also carries a stark warning about humanitys own future, a future that the Apple Vision Pro headset is walking us straight towards.
WALL-Es nightmarish vision of the future
Set in the 29th century, the opening act of WALL-E takes place on a version of Planet Earth that has been ravaged by consumerism, corporate greed and environmental neglect and is little more than a garbage-covered wasteland.
When the remnants of humanity are introduced roughly a third of the way through the movie, they are surviving aboard a starship out in space.
Despite their consumeristic nature leading to the trashing of their homeworld, the survivors have not abandoned their destructive practices.
Instead, they are constantly glued to advert-strewn holographic screens – that very much resemble the floating apps shown in the Vision Pro – while being wheeled around by self-driving hovering chairs with robots catering to their every whim.
Apple Vision Pro takes us one step closer to the future WALL-E imagined
Just because almost every movie – whether it be a gritty sci-fi like Blade Runner or a colorful kids film like WALL-E – predicts that the future will see humanity living in a dystopian world where technology and corporate greed are all-consuming, it doesnt mean that we actually have to aim for such a future.
While the technology used in the Vision Pro is certainly impressive – I cant deny that expanding a screen to make it look like a movie theater screen is quite appealing – the videos that have already emerged of people using the device out in public are eye-opening and not for the right reasons.
One montage Ive seen recently on YouTube included a clip of a young man sitting on a crowded train and tapping away at thin air as people sat around him while other clips featured several Vision Pro customers using the device while at the wheel of their cars – admittedly the cars in question were Teslas that have a degree of self-driving capability but that doesnt change the fact that these people were very much not paying attention to the road while behind the wheel of a moving vehicle.
It’s quite shocking just how similar these clips are to scenes in Pixars WALL-E and direct comparisons can be made between the movie and reality as people are so fixated on their screens that they fail to acknowledge people around them and are carted about by self-driving vehicles.
I realize that were never going to escape the advance of technology – after all, Im writing this on a laptop (and sounding like an old man yelling at a cloud while doing so) and youre most likely reading this on a phone – but a future where we have screens quite literally pressed against our eyes 24/7 is a future that should be confined to the realm of dystopian fiction like Black Mirror.
WALL-E is available to stream now on Disney+ while the Apple Vision Pro launched in the United States on February 2 and is available for $3,499.
