How the term is used here The phrase LLM moment appears in this channel's conversation with Kevin Kelly, WIRED's co-founder, in the context of virtual reality's long, slow arc. Kelly recalls being shown VR by Jaron Lanier back in 1987 and being completely blown away — he thought, this is the future. Yet decades later, the technology itself isn't that different from what he saw then; what changed was cost, from multi-million-dollar hardware to roughly $100. Despite that collapse in price, adoption has been startlingly slow. Kelly's diagnosis: VR is still waiting for its LLM moment — the kind of sudden breakthrough that made large language models feel essential almost overnight. The implied contrast The term works by pointing at AI as the counterexample. Kelly frames AI as a 50-year overnight success — a technology that took half a century of development to suddenly appear everywhere. The LLM moment is that apparent discontinuity: the point at which a technology that has been slowly maturing crosses into sudden, felt indispensability. VR, in his view, hasn't had that crossing yet. - An LLM moment is the breakthrough that makes a long-gestating technology suddenly feel essential. - Kelly suggests VR is still waiting for its LLM moment, despite decades of waiting and a massive price collapse. - The term implicitly contrasts with AI, which Kelly describes as a 50-year overnight success.