After everyone is wearing those XR glasses, I wonder what effect it will have on everyday conversation. At some point a killer app will show up that gives you a real-time “cheat sheet” to become a more sparkling, witty and generally engaging conversant.
Will this new capability be openly embraced? Will people launch into conversations knowing that all parties are experiencing a sort of artificial enhancement?
And will that lead to a transformation of conversation as we know it? For example, given that everyone will have their own private prompt, will some people choose to speak entirely in rhyming iambic pentameter?
Will movies and theater change because the everyday speech they aim to mimic will itself have changed? Will the unenhanced speech in movies from an earlier era come to seem odd and quaint, the way we find the inter-titles in silent movies odd and quaint?
Alas, once we go there, I suspect that we will never be able to go back. By analogy — we live in a world where everyone wears shoes, and therefore we build sidewalks that are unkind to bare feet. Similarly, once real-time conversation becomes enhanced as a matter of course, the world will become unkind to anyone who tries to speak without it.