The Words, According to Avi

I don’t get to name anything.

And that’s a shame. Because if I did, Spatial Computing would make a lot more sense, or at least be a lot more memorable.

[update 2024: see Apple Vision Pro. I hope Apple’s world-class marketing is enough to push Spatial Computing into permanently well-defined status.]

We’ve argued for years over the various Rs: first Virtual, then Augmented Reality. Then Milgram (et al) added Mixed Reality as the entire spectrum from A to V.

Then AR became more about augmenting the tiny video screens on our smartphones (which are not as smart as the operators they replaced, but much easier to carry).

Mircosoft used MR to mean a slightly transparent AR headset, like HoloLens. Magic Leap liked the M as Magic.

But then MR somehow got pulled back into being about video-pass-through AR. We selectively ignored anyone trying to coin ER, DR, UR, PR, WR, and various other nonsense I won’t bother to mention.

To solve this mess, we coined a new term, XR, to represent all the Rs, where the ‘x’ can be anything it’s little crossed heart desires. We didn’t love it, but we all started to use it to simplify our lives.

Then someone said, “That’s not specific enough! XR really means Extended Reality,” in the worst attempted…