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003
Field Note · 003
The room we were augmenting.
On the first two years of spatial computing adoption. Spring 2026.
The promise of AR, going back to Sutherland in 1968, was a world that opened up: overlays in public space, hands free, glance-driven, ambient. The data we have now describes a different room.
01 /
Survey work across multiple studies converges on one pattern. Most headset use is solitary, at home, with the curtains drawn. The most common use case is watching media alone. The second most common is working at a virtual desk in a small apartment.
02 /
Public wearing is rare and concentrated in commute and travel, moments already coded as "not quite here." Glasses with displays have done better than headsets, but mostly by being more discreet, which is the opposite of what they were sold to do.
03 /
The interface that was supposed to put the world back into the screen is being used, mostly, to put a larger screen into a smaller room.
This is not a failure. It is an adoption pattern. The first thing a new medium does is collect the loneliness already in the building and give it a higher resolution. Television did this. Headphones did this. Spatial computing is doing it now, faster, and with better light.
We will eventually take this technology outside. We will look back and notice that the first thing it did was let us sit, alone, in a slightly enlarged version of the room we were already in.