Disneyland’s solution to screen time? Face-mounted spyware
Disney wants you to stop looking at your phone in the parks, so strap a Zuckerberg-powered surveillance headset to your face instead. The big idea? Meta’s AI glasses will whisper directions to churros in your ear while quietly recording everything around you, all so you can “stay in the moment.”
“You’re there together with friends and family and people that you care about, and every time you have to look down at a device or a phone, it breaks that spell,” Walt Disney Imagineering President Bruce Vaughn said on the most recent episode of Disney’s YouTube series “We Call It Imagineering.”
But according to Vaughn, Disney has the perfect solution: Meta’s AI glasses, which will “reinforce the shared experience” with your family by allowing you to leave your phone in your pocket. What he doesn’t address, however, is the extent to which the glasses let the wearer check out of reality almost entirely, allowing you to simultaneously look at image overlays, do a two-way video call, watch an Instagram Reel, listen to a podcast, view text notifications or record people unknowingly.
A Meta demo video posted in September previews exactly how they’d “reinforce the shared experience” on your next Disneyland trip: A park cast member named Beeta gets an unprompted alert from the glasses that says, “Hey Beeta, Pirates of the Caribbean currently has a short wait time. Want directions?” Beeta loudly responds in a mostly empty park, “Yeah, that sounds great. How do I get there?”
According to Disney execs, these AR glasses will magically preserve your family bonding time by replacing screen addiction with full-spectrum distraction and Disney merch commercials. Critics point out that the glasses have already been used to harass strangers, eavesdrop in private spaces, and plan actual crimes, minor details, apparently, when weighed against the dream of getting real-time updates about turkey legs or the Haunted Mansion.
Oy-and folks are worried about governmental surveillance. Thanks, but no thanks.
Anyone who embraces this kind of tech...deserves everything it comes with 🤷♀️