>All this leads me to ask, what actual incentive (aside from short term conveniences) would I have to buy an AR device?

There was a time, at least for myself and a lot of people in the AR wave, where we were trying to make computing integrated into everyday life such that they kind of disappear.

The idea was that genuinely we could have “spatial” computing where there really was very little difference between the digital and the physical because we could build a digital twin of the real world

The only way you can do this reliably is to have a constant stream of data from fixed and egocentric sensors which have context about the world around you to give you more information to make your life easier and more integrated.

This was in a time where we were the surveillance web was just starting to really ramp up around the 2010s

Of course, the massive government corporate surveillance state dashed any hopes of being able to do any of this with human dignity.

We did used to dream of a better world, not naiively I and others have been writing about the risks and dangers of all these things while still pushing them forward.

Short of an overhaul of human society, I don’t see the kind of technological future that we all wanted happening

I still use my xreal glasses from time to time but the social ecosystem doesn’t exist to actually make progress. Maybe in another half century