To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.Steven LevyThe best virtual reality experience I’ve had this year was not with the $500 Quest 3 or the $3,500 Apple VisionPro, and it didn’t even require a headset. Sure, it cost $2.3 billion. But it came with a live soundtrack from an iconic rock band.I am talking, of course, about last weekend’s U2 concert in the Sphere, the giant installation sitting just off the Las Vegas strip. It’s like something out of a Jordan Peele movie come to life. Or a modern Kafkaesque short story where a concert arena awakes one day and finds that it has transmogrified into a giant eyeball, which advertisers exploit to promote stuff like YouTube TV's NFL Sunday Ticket on its 580,000-square-foot skin. The brainchild of Madison Square Garden Entertainment CEO James Dolan—not a popular figure in New York City—the Sphere lustily promotes itself as the future of entertainment. It’s not a ridiculous claim.Last weekend, I and 18,000 others filed into the Sphere’s spacious atrium and then into the amphitheater. Its 388-foot-high interior wall, surfaced with a 16K-resolution video panel that stretched up to the ceiling and around 170 degrees horizontally—all the eye can see without turning your head—appeared to be part of an ancient steampunk castle. A DJ pumped up the already rabid crowd, and the vibe was pure Thunderdome.Then U2 took to the stage, a simple platform with a Brian Eno-designed raised circle reminiscent of a record turntable. The Irish rockers were there to christen the Sphere, the first of 25 shows during a months-long residency. As they began to play, cracks appeared in the virtual castle wall and dust began oozing out. Then the walls vanished, and for the next two hours out tumbled a series of 16K moving images that, by consuming our entire field of vision, were fully immersive. Sound was provided by 168,000 speakers hidden behind the display.You know that movie Tron where someone got sucked into a video game? Being inside the Sphere was a real-life sci-fi film where 18,000 people were suddenly inside an over-the-top 1980s music video. The super high resolution display bounded over the uncanny valley, showing scenery from places both real and imagined that convincingly made it seem like the band—and audience—had been transported to bizarre locales. There were dizzyingly detailed collages, one a tribute to Elvis, who was at that moment being dethroned by a giant swarm of pixels as the King of Las Vegas. Other times real-time images of the band members themselves loomed like goliaths, a hundred feet tall. When the images began moving toward us, or panned downward, we got that VR feeling that we were actually moving.It’s like a fistfight between the band and the immersive screen—we kind of win each night.The Sphere is basically an ultra-high bandwidth conduit for immense streams of digital information, with its own server farm and about 1,000 miles of fiber optic cable. The band’s longtime artistic director, Willie Williams, commissioned a series of artists to create virtual environments used to zip everyone through time and space. The concert was intended to highlight U2’s full-album performance of its classic Achtung Baby, as well as some other hits. Fittingly, the set list included the song “Vertigo.” When U2 performed its new single “Atomic City” the band was in front of the throbbing Las Vegas Strip itself, with cars moving on the streets and planes flying in the background. Then the buildings crumbled, and suddenly they were cranking away in the desert—what that same land must have looked like before civilization intruded. The most spectacular effect came toward the end, when it appeared U2 was performing “Beautiful Day” in front of a huge lake. Floating offshore was … a giant sphere. As the song progressed, the massive object drifted closer, and we could see an aperture opening in its side that eventually sucked us all inside. The belly of this beast was filled with birds, fish, snakes, and other fauna. Genesis itself.After the show, some critics and music purists wondered whether the spectacle detracted from the music. Even Chris Blackwell, the Island Records founder who first signed U2, said at a small gathering this week that while he enjoyed the event, he felt the music got short shrift. I get it. U2 is a well-oiled rock and roll machine and perfectly capable of holding the attention of a giant crowd. But at times I felt like I was at one of those Boston Pops experiences where John Williams conducts an orchestra to accompany a Star Wars or Superman movie with a live soundtrack. Your eyes are irresistibly drawn to the moving images, not the musicians. “It’s like a fistfight between the band and the immersive screen,” says U2 guitarist and resident technophile the Edge, when we spoke a few days after the show. “It’s almost an even fist fight. But we kind of win each night.”He should check the fight card. During the Sphere concert, there was a stretch of a few thoughtful songs where the hi-res surface took a breather. Roaming that turntable among his bandmates as he played and sang, Bono seemed to be channeling Elvis’ famous 1968 comeback special. Yet instead of being enchanted, my feeling was—bring back the wild stuff on the wall! When I confess this to the Edge, he pushes back. “In the end, the songs dictate what we put on the screen, and what we do as a band in performance,” he says. “That’s still the core of this event. And without the music, it would be an empty spectacle.”Amanda HooverDell CameronSimon HillParesh DaveThe purists should take a deep breath. Technology has always enhanced and transformed pop music. Ever hear of the electric guitar? Back in the ’60s, acid-rock bands would always be accompanied by a trippy light show. The Beatles used complicated studio enhancements in their records (Bono crooned a snatch from Sgt. Pepper in the Sphere, honoring Paul McCartney’s attendance). Heavy metal bands use literal pyrotechnics, sometimes with disastrous consequences. This summer, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have gone all-in on spectacle, transfixing stadium audiences with circus-like stunts in performances that are larger-than-life art installations. “This could be something like a completely new paradigm,” the Edge says of the Sphere experience. “We’re maybe uniquely suited to exploring the potential, but there’s still so much that can be done here.”Concerts will never be the same, but could the Sphere also change movies? Darren Aronofsky, the Oscar-nominated director, created an only-for-the-Sphere installation called Postcard from Earth. It opens this week, with several daily showings and tickets starting at $49. The work casts the audience as earthling space travelers, who upon awakening from suspended animation are reminded by their ship’s AI bot what Earth used to be like. It’s an excuse to present a series of stunning, Sphere-scale scenes captured from all seven continents. Aronofsky spent the past year or so using a just-invented, 316-megapixel camera dubbed Big Sky to capture mind-blowing images from nature, industry, and human habitats. All at 120 frames a second. “We went for the experiential element of the Sphere, trying to transport people to a different place,” Aronofsky told me this week. He went both big (volcanos) and small (bugs). “The clarity of this is very strange,” he says of the audience experience. “Two hundred feet away from you is a 100-foot tall praying mantis that’s perfectly sharp. You couldn’t really experience that in real life.” My own favorite part of Postcard was when we were teleported into the point of view from the back seat of various street transit vehicles in different cities. The haptic seats rumbled and bounced in perfect unison with the moving images. A stiff breeze hit our faces. Aronofsky explained that these scenes were spontaneous captures from Zambia, Milan, India. “And, of course, Istanbul.”Amanda HooverDell CameronSimon HillParesh DaveWhile U2 used the Sphere to create a genuine concert, Postcard is more of a mind-stretching theme-park attraction. Could you use Sphere-like projection for a feature film like Aronofsky’s Black Swan or Requiem for a Dream? “How you do that with a very strict narrative is open to interpretation by a future filmmaker,” says Aronofsky, who doesn’t seem to be chafing at the bit to try it. But James Cameron must be salivating.David Dibble, CEO of Sphere developer MSG Ventures, says that we should view the giant orb as a platform. He recalls Dolan, who as well as helming MSG is also CEO of Sphere Entertainment, which owns MSG Ventures, saying “We need to make sure that we build a palette of tools and suggested style guides we give over to the creative community—and then turn them loose.”But how can that scale? Could it be a genuine platform? Not many bands will expend years of preparation to craft a full-body experience like U2, which can command stratospheric ticket prices. Most artists are unlikely to produce costly installations if they can only be shown in the Sphere. Even if Sphere Entertainment builds more of them—it has already announced plans for London—that’s still a very limited audience. But here’s an idea that would enable millions to participate in spectacles like Postcard from Earth and the U2 concert: Produce a version of the work as an app for Meta and Apple mixed-reality headsets! It would be the modern equivalent of listening to a live album. You might not get the sound or the visceral gut punch of the actual ex-Sphere-ience (I made a word!), but I’d sign up to see that U2 show recreated in the excellent resolution and spatial sound of those ever-improving headsets. In fact, I’d be surprised if Apple wasn’t on this already.Meanwhile, I’m still reeling from what the Sphere and those aging Irish rockers delivered in Las Vegas, a sublime mix of analog grit and digital wizardry. It wasn’t until an hour or so after I melted into the suddenly tame-seeming Las Vegas nightlife that I realized I had just seen a U2 concert where the band did not play “Pride (In the Name of Love).” And I wasn’t bitter!Amanda HooverDell CameronSimon HillParesh DaveIt’s almost exactly 20 years since U2 struck up its relationship with the tech industry. I wrote about it for Newsweek. In retrospect, this story is notable for two things, one sad and one prescient. The first is that Steve Jobs’ apparent recovery from cancer was an illusion. The second is that Bono’s big wet kiss to the future would leave a sour taste when U2’s second venture with Apple—pushing a new album onto every iTunes user without consent—became known as one of the great disasters in music history.Steve Jobs is feeling rather vindicated these days. "The iPod is three years old," says the Apple CEO. "When we started this, nobody knew what it was, or they didn't believe it would be a big hit." But last week at San Jose's vintage California Theatre, Apple's CEO, apparently at full strength after cancer surgery last summer, was triumphantly unveiling the newest twists on his megahit digital music player—with the extra oomph of a performance by U2's singer Bono and guitarist the Edge. As the game Irish frontman belted out a tune from the band's upcoming CD, a verklempt Jobs punched a colleague on the leg and said, "We're going to remember this for the rest of our lives….”Amanda HooverDell CameronSimon HillParesh DaveThe $349 U2 iPod is colored the same shade of midnight as Bono's leather jacket (the click wheel is fire-engine red) and festooned with the band members' laser-etched signatures on the back. The real significance, though, is the relationship Apple has forged with one of the elite bastions of rock, possibly a harbinger of new business models in the digital age. For the last few weeks we've all been inundated with Day-Glo iPod commercials featuring U2, which previously had not lent itself to ad campaigns. But as the Edge explains, "It's easy to be in the iTunes ad because iTunes is promoting us." In addition, Apple will be exclusively selling a $149 "digital boxed set" consisting of all of U2's official recordings, plus 25 previously unreleased cuts. This can be purchased with a single mouseclick (you might want to buy a case of Guinness to pass the time while the songs download, since Jobs estimated it will take "a few hours" to get the 400 songs).Down the road, Bono and Jobs both envision new opportunities to sell songs and build fan communities, like offering concert recordings at the iTunes store. "We're getting ready to do it," says Jobs. "Wouldn't it be great if the morning after the concert, you can buy it on iTunes, and anyone in the world can listen to it the next day?"The bottom line for U2 is that success of the iPod and other initiatives has firmly discredited record executives who prophesied that the digital transformation would doom the music industry. "Don't believe those people," Bono says. "We want to stop running from the future, but walk up to it and give it a great big kiss. Give people what they want when they want it."Ivy asks, “Do you think Clubhouse ever had a chance of maintaining momentum or was it truly a pandemic-effect moment in time?”Thanks for the question, Ivy. I was cautiously bullish on the social-audio app Clubhouse when I documented its dizzy rise. I did flag the worry that its founders, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, would prematurely open the doors to millions of people and be unable to handle the consequences. That turned out to be the case. Low-quality content including polarizing—and even toxic—discussions, and endless spammy get-rich-quick topics seemed to drive out the best experiences.Amanda HooverDell CameronSimon HillParesh DaveWhen I was researching the story in late 2020, there always seemed to be multiple rooms that interested me at any given time. By 2022, I had trouble finding a single room that was worth my time. (Maybe they were there but the app failed to find them for me.) Also, despite the urging of Clubhouse’s founders, the app was never able to establish itself as the go-to, voice-only meeting place for people to talk privately. Probably Zoom and group calling on other apps barred the way. And Twitter Spaces, a direct competitor that seems to organize discussions with less stress, didn’t help either. In March 2022, I found myself writing a Plaintext headlined “Clubhouse’s Fall From Grace.”How much did the return to something resembling post-Covid life dampen enthusiasm for Clubhouse? It’s reasonable to assume that the early heavy users who found the app a tonic for pandemic loneliness used Clubhouse less when they were able to leave their real houses. But those people were the biggest complainers when the founders failed to successfully manage the incoming hordes. And it’s not like people abandoned audio altogether when they stopped sheltering in place.I do credit Davison and Seth for creating an innovative app and launching it like a rocket ship, with near perfect timing. But sticking the landing is hard (just ask SpaceX.) I think it could have been done, with slower growth, more attention to the quality of the rooms, and less of a rush to build out a creator-economy revenue stream. Right now, I bet the founders wish they had more forcefully pursued a sale to Twitter when their business was supposedly worth billions. Still, Clubhouse is not yet dead, so who knows? Maybe the next pandemic will come in time to rescue the ailing app.You can submit questions to [email protected]. Write ASK LEVY in the subject line.Earlier this week, hundreds of millions of phones in the US started screeching for FEMA’s emergency alert test. What is the supposed emergency that would trigger this for real? Does FEMA know something we don’t? Not being paranoid but … being paranoid.Here’s your live blog of the Sam Bankman-Fried trial. SBF got a haircut!Patrick Stewart has played many characters, from Macbeth to Picard. But the most interesting might be Stewart himself.Amanda HooverDell CameronSimon HillParesh DaveInside Neuralink’s plans to keep you from knowing about the dead chiphead monkeys.The Grace Hopper Celebration is a job fair for women to find tech jobs. But this year men with résumés in hand overran it. That’s a bug, not a feature!Updated 10-6-2023, 2:15 pm EDT: NFL Sunday Ticket is made available by YouTube TV, not DirecTV.📨 Understand AI advances with our Fast Forward newsletterThe AI detection arms race is onThe gruesome story of how Neuralink’s monkeys actually diedQuan Millz was the biggest mystery on TikTok—until nowThere’s an alternative to the infinite scrollAI chatbots are invading your local government🔌 Charge right into summer with the best travel adapters, power banks, and USB hubsSteven LevyAnna LagosWill KnightKhari JohnsonKhari JohnsonLauren GoodeWill KnightWill KnightMore From WIREDContact© 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. 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