I was recently waiting for an Uber when the GPS decided to lie for sport. The car was somewhere nearby, I was somewhere nearby, and somehow both of us were trapped in that modern ritual of wrong pins, slow turns, vague waving, and “I’m here” messages that help absolutely no one.
That was when I had a very reasonable thought: this is exactly where a hologram of a giant arrow pointing at me would be useful.
Not “spatial computing.” Not a $3,499 headset. Not an AR demo that looks incredible only if you’re the person wearing the glasses. I mean an actual, visible, shared holographic arrow hovering above my head like a beacon for one mildly annoyed passenger.
Sci-fi spent decades training me to expect spectacle. Consumer tech, being consumer tech, looked at that dream and asked whether it could be turned into a screen, an app, a subscription, or a device with a charging case.
The annoying thing is that sci-fi wasn’t exactly wrong. A lot of the gadgets did arrive, just in forms so ordinary they barely register anymore.
The Star Trek communicator became the smartphone. Pew says 91% of U.S. adults now own one, up from 35% in 2011, which is exactly the kind of miracle that becomes boring once everyone uses it to ignore unknown callers.
The glowing slab became the tablet. Video calls escaped mission control and became FaceTime, Zoom, and another reason to check whether the camera’s accidentally on.
Voice-controlled computers became smart speakers that can handle a kitchen timer and still misunderstand the word “lamp” with total confidence. Domestic robots became robot vacuums, which is impressive until one wages a quiet war against a sock.
Holograms are harder to shrug off because they still feel like the missing receipt. We have pieces of the idea, sure, but each one arrives with an asterisk.
Apple sells the Vision Pro, which puts spatial computing in front of your eyes if your face and wallet are ready for the commitment.
Meta’s Orion sounds closer to the fantasy, but Meta says the prototype is going to employees and select outside audiences while it works toward a consumer AR glasses line.
Looking Glass has pushed holographic displays closer to consumer territory with Musubi, a holographic photo and video frame. That’s genuinely neat. It is also very funny that the sci-fi future apparently starts as a desktop photo frame.
That’s usually how tomorrow arrives. Not as the scene we imagined, but as the most shippable form of the idea. Even XR is drifting toward compromise. IDC says XR device shipments grew 44.4% in 2025, mostly because of smart glasses, while traditional VR and mixed reality headset shipments kept declining.
That doesn’t make the tech useless. The boring version often wins because it solves a real problem without needing to look good in a movie trailer. Phones beat holograms because rectangles are practical in a way floating avatars still aren’t. They fit in pockets, survive bad lighting, and don’t require everyone in the room to pretend this is a normal way to talk.
So yes, the future is here. It just got product-managed into something that needs a charger, an account, and three permissions.
Still, where are my damn holograms?
Nearly a month after announcing the GPT-6.1 Sol model, OpenAI unveiled GPT-6.1 Terra today. The latest addition to the family focuses on computer use, visual reasoning, coding, and professional work, while costing 50% less through the API than GPT-5.6 Terra.
OpenAI says Terra can handle everything from filling out browser forms and working inside spreadsheets to interpreting technical drawings and editing videos. The company says it can also complete computer-based tasks more than three times faster than GPT-6 Astra and GPT-6.1 Sol.
ASUS has started selling its UGen Intel Arc Pro B70 graphics card in Europe, bringing its take on Intel’s workstation GPU to customers with a hefty €1,799 recommended price. The card is available in Germany and Austria, while ASUS lists it at CHF 1,799 in Switzerland.
Intel first introduced the Arc Pro B70 in March 2026, with its own branded model starting at $949. ASUS’s version arrives several months later with the same core GPU architecture but a different cooling design and a higher power rating. The price also places it well above Intel’s original starting point, although the two prices are not directly comparable because ASUS’s European figure includes VAT.
Anthropic has officially filed to go public, and buried inside its S-1 is a blunt warning about the technology at the center of its business. The maker of Claude AI says advanced AI could cause everything from large-scale cyberattacks and geopolitical instability to catastrophic or even existential risks for humanity.
The warnings take up a surprisingly large part of the filing. Axios notes that more than 90 pages, or roughly a third of the prospectus, focus on risk factors. Many of them warn about what could happen as AI systems become more capable and autonomous.