As if the artificial intelligence boom wasn’t enough to wrap our tiny minds around, tech companies have also spent the best part of this decade pushing another sci fi adjacent technology on us. Virtual reality hasn’t quite got to writing high school essay levels of mainstream yet, but that doesn’t stop the powers that be from trying to make it that way. 

It hasn’t been an easy ride, however. Meta has been the subject of endless jokes and criticism for its vision of the Metaverse, and Google tried and failed miserably to innovate in the 2010s with Google Glass. This hasn’t stopped Apple from getting in on the game, announcing earlier this week its own foray into VR: the Apple Vision Pro. A headset with an eye-watering $3499 price tag, the good people of Twitter have wasted no time in mocking the idea of wearing computerized ski goggles to check our email. We laugh now, but who knows? Maybe this is the future.