You mean a HUD projected on the windshield itself? That's not my experience with it at all; I don't have to "look at" it, when my eyes are focused on the road in front of me, the HUD is sharp enough and positioned so that I always know my speed etc. without having to actively look for it.

Your car might have settings to adjust it somehow, have you tried those?

A HUD reduces the difference in focus distance between "looking at road" and "looking at speedometer." It matters more as you get older, because your eyes focus slower.

Isn't it a general rule of driving (or operating any sufficiently dangerous machinery) to keep the eyes on the road, constantly reminding oneself to do so, so the attention is kept where it is needed? I mean, in theory. In practice, I see people deep in their damn phones all the time - and it's scary - but I think that's more of an attitude (social) issue than a display (technology) problem.

And, yes, surely, one needs to periodically switch attention to mirrors and instruments, and I must imagine that shorter gaze movement distance shouldn't hurt. It's the same as checking the speedometer - you don't see the road, only have a rough idea from the peripheral vision.

Although I can imagine that a HUD can be actively distracting, constantly intercepting attention, e.g., flickering.

Eye tracking and depth of field adjustments are the missing pieces. A HUD has to be able to stay in the same focal range as what is viewed beyond it so you don't lose concentration on the task at hand.

In fighter jets, they project onto the visor. Obviously not the most convenient method for an automobile. There have been attemtps to figure out depth of field but it's tough. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00304...

"Change blindness" is how this is characterized in the research field. Basically any abrupt change in your visual field will prevent you from seeing another change on the road.

http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/#CBdemos

Even less is needed to generate danger: I found myself checking my phone twice during a car trip because when listening to music through the USB-C to Jack dongle, it believes I am blasting music at full volume through my ears and decides to cut off the volume to 10% after 20 minutes.

Don't, and I mean DON'T decide things for the user.

I think there’s plenty of evidence that they’re better in jet fighters (where users are well-trained), possible also in automotive (where they have been sold for decades; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_head-up_display), but of course, it will depend on the design of the HUD and on what it displays.

Extreme example: showing random ads every ten minutes, even if the glasses c/should suspect you’re driving a car. I have my doubts as to whether Meta will make the right choices here.

Not sure HUDs in cars will cause same issues. There aren't a lot of things to read on car HUDs that require direct concentrated focus. Every HUD I've seen have displayed the most minimal information. Usually the speed, map directions and media currently playing. Even the map directions usually only indicate the next step in route. So a quick glance is all that is required. Regular dashboard gauges require far more concertation. Especially if you're new to that specific vehicle.

What's amusing is the original use case for HUD displays was to reduce attention problems. ;-)

There is a difference between status information like speed and directions and messages from other people.

Your attention reacts differently

Is this a physical or mental focus thing?

As in, are you just concentrating on the speedometer instead of the road, or do your eyeballs have to adjust because the optics aren't set correctly? I believe a HUD is supposed to focus at infinity, same as a road that's many times farther away than the size of your eyeballs.

"The World Beyond Your Head" from Matthew Crawford is exactly about this. Definitely recommend reading!

Meanwhile, I saw someone using their windshield mounted phone to watch videos while sitting in traffic yesterday (and driving erratically as a result which led me to notice). The self-driving cars can't come soon enough.

Is this an aftermarket device that doesn't project to infinity or a purpose designed feature from the manufacturer? The former is not a real HUD for the reasons you cite.

It's quite different. Both are rude. But in one case the person is looking at their phone, and in another case the person is basically looking directly at you but engaged with some other thing happening on their device, as if they are in some drug induced stupor or having a neurological episode.

>I don't think this technology introduces anything new to this issue.

This belief shows up time and time and again and is nearly always false. We had the written word before the internet, and before the printing press, so blogs are just like a hand-written letter. Gossip has always existed, so twitter does nothing new. There have always been things which eat at our impulse control, such as sports gambling and casinos, so smart phones are nothing new. etc.

What this view really fails to understand is that the constant here is human nature. Human nature is built more or less the same way as it has been for thousands of years. What changes is how technology allows human nature to play out, whether or not any given technology interacts poorly with human nature. New problems can exist purely based on scope, scale, reach, ease-of-use, lack of friction, etc.

The glasses close the attention loop faster, and the brain really, really likes quick stimuli -> dopamine release loops.

The faster it happens, the more addictive it is. It's the difference between oral administration of drugs and IVing them directly into one's veins.

Possibly I'm a horrible conversation partner, but even today already it happens with some regularity that someone is checking their phone while I'm in a conversation with them. It's even more common in group conversations.

And tacking on some personal experience, I've also noticed when I'm meeting over Zoom (i.e. with the rest of the internet within arm's reach), I get distracted way more easily than when meeting in real life. Sure, maybe not all those meetings are super important to me, but I'm not sure if the world would be a worse place if that wasn't possible.

You can tell that some people who grew up addicted to video content already sort of just stare at the real world like they are watching a video and don't quite realise they are present. If they were wearing glasses where they were actually watching videos while they stare into space not much would change.

I disagree because the apps are designed to be addictive, so the conversation might actually be more important, the person might agree and say the conversation is more important, but they can't control themselves. It's hard to muster the willpower to fight "social" media.

No its not perfectly socially acceptable, in contrary. Rude is the best description, be it personal or professional life.

When I see such person who simply can't resist looking at their displays during conversations, I know I am seeing a hard addict with host of other attention disorders. And the fool is feeding those, actively making them worse for some ultra short dopamine kicks that keep getting shorter till they make new baseline.

Not a stellar person in any meaningful way, rather an addict or an asshole. So much for perfectly acceptable.

That is indeed pretty much culture dependent, in Southern Europe sunglasses only go out during Winter, when indoors or when bumping into a friend.

    > In my culture it’s considered extremely casual — and therefore quite rude

And yet there isnt any large magnitude of buyers in the market, despite the fact that over a billion people use Meta products every month.

There's plenty of people who don't mind using their phone in a socially disrespectful way. Maybe they got it right.

the millennials I know are worse than their children

We don’t need any of those. So many brilliant people working at facebook and wasting their talent.

And among their non-technical contributions, you have genocide in Myanmar, election interference worldwide, the explosive growth of hate speech, countless teenager suicides, and more.

Any large company can write a web UI framework, but only a truly special one can directly contribute to genocide, know about it, have employees bring it up and suggest intervening, and decide that nah, they'd rather let people die and make more money.

Banks and government as your first two examples of useless institutions is definitely interesting

Billions of people willingly use banks, fast food chains etc. all the time.

Mmm you're making me want to read Bullshit Jobs again.

banks protect your money so you don't have to keep it under your mattress and get easily stolen. governments build roads and give you clean water. what are you on about? you know Walden was a total lie right?

>if Zuck doesn’t want to re-hash his old original sin (distracting algorithmic feeds) into this new form factor

Out of curiosity, is there a specific reason to expect different? To me this is designed for attention primacy, for exactly that purpose.

If Zuck wasn't Zuck he wouldn't be Zuck

In this world even a self driving car doesnt help if an individual sporadically walks infront of a car at close range due to being distracted.

I have never once in my life felt a moment of wanting that.

Yeah I've been getting into such situations quite frequently recently here in Germany.

Try AirPods Pro 3 translation mode

I've been making an effort to keep my phone in my pocket or even bag when talking to someone, and not having it sit on the table so I can't get distracted. I just can't imagine having notifications literally shoved in your vision automatically all the time.

The whole product category seems to be everything wrong with tech turned up to 11.

That is true, it’s an old problem being amplified.

The square in the middle of Woolwich, London has a giant screen showing BBC News all day. No idea who decided to put that there but it gives the place a strong 1984 feel.

Probably because many of us avoid such cafes? The "wall plastered with TVs bar" seems to be much less popular here and those places are aggressively unpleasant for me.

Oof, I hate that. Luckily most cafes over here don't have TVs, or even clocks, for exactly that reason. I've been in countries where TVs in cafes are more common, and I don't know how you put up with it.

Obviously, they don't have the gesture bracelet for the TVs yet.

All of those would keep on existing if Meta died today, so who cares? Are you saying we have to keep permitting Meta to help governments oppress people and enable teen suicides just in case we get another React? that is silly