If you thought you were finally getting your hands on some info about the secretive Google-backed startup, Magic Leap, you’d be wrong—at least for now—because amidst much speculation, Magic Leap executives have cancelled their public talks on the technology.
Magic Leap is a start-up working with 3D light field display technology for augmented reality applications, and if you want to know more, you’ll have to wait a little longer for a good explanation, because both CEO Rony Abovitz and long-time game designer Graeme Devine, now Chief Creative Officer of the company, are going back into quasi-stealth mode.
Abovitz, whose first TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) appearance 2 years ago was more of an enigmatic performance piece (at an unofficial TEDx talk), was supposed to present a talk at TED2015 in Vancouver this week entitled ‘Radical Reframe’, but according to conference curator Chris Anderson, Abovitz has cancelled for “reasons unknown.”
Although we weren’t expecting any big reveals during the talk, any chance to further understand why companies including Google funded the mysterious start-up to the tune $524 million, or even a basic explanation of the company’s patented Digital Lightfield Technology, wouldn’t have gone amiss.
Graeme Devine’s Reddit AMA (ask me anything) programmed for today has also gone MIA. Although the online Q&A session wasn’t specifically targeting his work at Magic Leap, Devine would have had to field questions from the community nonetheless—a forum where silence often times speaks louder than words.
MIT Technology Review’s Rachel Metz recently profiled Magic Leap, saying that the tech “has a good chance of being one of the next big things in computing…” conceding that “It’s clear that getting the technology into [eyeglasses] form will be very hard.”
If Abovitz’s AMA three weeks ago was any indicator of how things were supposed to go, evidenced by the ultra-nebulous answers given by the CEO himself, then the company may still not be ready to speak on any real level about their technology. So we’re back to square one, wondering why the company that says “it’s time to bring magic back into the world,” hasn’t told us whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.
