There’s a passage in Elif Batuman’s “Summer in Samarkand Part II,” published in N+1 in 2010, that I’ve never forgotten. Batuman noted that the language of Old Uzbek had 100 different words for crying.

“I never really expected to cry a hundred different ways, but I’d hoped to feel connected in just as many. This is what mixed-reality headset makers promise, along with the assurance that wearers will ...