The Infinite Retina

Spatial Computing, Augmented Reality, and how a collision of new technologies are bringing about the next tech revolution

Irena Cronin, Robert Scoble

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781838823832
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencia de la computación
• Subtopic: Interacción persona-computadora

A compelling and insightful look at the future of Spatial Computing, and how this cutting-edge technology is changing the way we do business across seven primary industries, and what it means for humanity as a whole.

Key Features

• Discover how Spatial Computing is changing the face of technology
• Get a roadmap for the disruptions caused by Spatial Computing and how it will affect seven major industries
• Gain insights about the past, present, and future of technology from the world's leading experts and innovators

Book Description

What is Spatial Computing and why is everyone from Tesla, Apple, and Facebook investing heavily in it?

In The Infinite Retina, authors Irena Cronin and Robert Scoble attempt to answer that question by helping you understand where Spatial Computing?an augmented reality where humans and machines can interact in a physical space?came from, where it's going, and why it's so fundamentally different from the computers or mobile phones that came before.

They present seven visions of the future and the industry verticals in which Spatial Computing has the most influence?Transportation; Technology, Media, and Telecommunications; Manufacturing; Retail; Healthcare; Finance; and Education.

The book also shares insights about the past, present, and future from leading experts an other industry veterans and innovators, including Sebastian Thrun, Ken Bretschneider, and Hugo Swart. They dive into what they think will happen in Spatial Computing in the near and medium term, and also explore what it could mean for humanity in the long term.

The Infinite Retina then leaves it up to you to decide whether Spatial Computing is truly where the future of technology is heading or whether it's just an exciting, but passing, phase.

What you will learn

• Look back at historical paradigms that changed the face of technology
• Consider how Spatial Computing could be the new technology that changes our lives
• See how Virtual and Augmented Reality will change the way we do healthcare
• Learn how Spatial Computing technology will lead to fully automated transportation
• Think about how Spatial Computing will change the manufacturing industry
• Explore how finance and retail are going to be impacted through Spatial Computing devices
• Hear accounts from industry experts on what they expect Spatial Computing to bring to their sectors

Who this book is for

The Infinite Retina is for anyone interested in the future of technology and how Augmented Reality and Spatial Computing (among other developments) will affect both businesses and the individual.

Part I

Why Spatial Computing and Why Now?

The Significance of Spatial Computing

1

Prime Directive

A perfect storm of change will arrive during the 2020s. We predict that we will see computing switch from staring into a four-inch piece of glass in our hands to using devices on our face that bring computing to every surface. Along with that, we will see advances such as vehicles moving without humans in them for the first time. A fourth paradigm of the personal computing age is upon us, Spatial Computing, and it is one that truly makes personal computers even more personal.

With the coming of Spatial Computing and its two purest members, Virtual and Augmented Reality, we believe that businesses and human cooperation need to be aimed at one thing: working together to build complex technologies to keep us around on this planet longer and in a more satisfied and productive state, while paying attention to the effects that these technologies have on ourselves and the planet. Spatial Computing in the 2020s will see immense challenges, but great opportunities will be available for brands to use new technologies for combined social good. Just what is it about Spatial Computing that is making human beings crave it?

At stadiums around the world, they are getting ready for it. We visited a place in Las Vegas because of it. Hollywood is getting ready for it. We visited a huge studio in Manhattan Beach, California, to see it. Investors and entrepreneurs are getting ready for it. We visited several in Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley. Hospitals, shopping malls, hotels, cities, automotive companies, power companies, banks, and more are investing in it. Tens of billions of dollars are being invested in it by both big and small tech companies.

That "it," which is Spatial Computing, is computing that you, virtual beings, or robots can move around in. It includes all the software and technology needed to move around in a digital 3D world.

That is software and technology associated with AI, including Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and all other apps that support the creation and maintenance of a digital 3D world. We see great strides that will be made in Spatial Computing uses for many industry verticals, including Technology, Media, and Telecommunications (TMT), Transportation, Manufacturing, Retail, Finance, Healthcare, and Education.

Before we dig into everything that's happening that caused us to write The Infinite Retina, let's back up and think about the Prime Directive that is driving billions of dollars in human effort into Spatial Computing. Why do human beings need robots delivering food and building things in factories, and why do we need Spatial Computing devices on our faces so that we can work, entertain ourselves, educate ourselves, and collaborate with each other in new ways?

What is the Prime Directive? Does it have something to do with why humans spend more and more on technology or tools every year? Are any new trends, like our changing understanding of climate change, causing this change? Does culture itself change in a major way because of the Prime Directive?

Photo credit: Robert Scoble. Attendees at the 2019 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco use a Magic Leap Spatial Computing headset.

What Makes Us Human?

Human beings are classified as Homo sapiens, which in Latin means "knowing man." Modern Homo sapiens are believed to have appeared a little over 300,000 years ago. The distinction between Homo sapiens and what came before has to do with the relatively sophisticated use of tools―tools that were used to survive more efficiently and with which humans gained control of their surroundings. Tools were also used by early humans to make art on cave walls and carve statuettes of female fertility goddesses. The tools served as augmenting devices―augmenting humans' chances of survival and also of expression.

With modern humans, this augmentation can take the form of education, which in turn is used to gain knowledge. With knowledge, our chances of survival should be better. In many ways, our Prime Directive is to know how to better survive and how to better express ourselves by willfully creating and using tools for those purposes. It is a dual directive, for it cannot be proven that one gives rise to the other, but rather both are mutually beneficial. And it is for both very practical and expressive reasons that tools have continued to be created from the time of early man to today. An example of a human being's ingenuity that traverses both the practical and the expressive are the iterative inventions of the writing "pen and paper" combination. This combination tool, which goes back millennia, started out with cave walls, some form of patchworked dried grasses, as well as stone, serving as the "paper" and natural dye and sturdy reed, as well as a stone or metal chisel, serving as the "pen." "Pen and paper" has been used to record both business and legal matters, as well as nonfictional and fictional narrative, and poetry, as well as visual art, such as paintings, when the "pen" is conceived as pigments. With the advent of the typewriter, there was even more of a separation between the practical and textually expressive and the visually expressive. A machine, the typewriter, was then replaced by the word processor and then the computer. And here we are these days utilizing our computers and their smaller counterparts―the smartphone. Computers did not only replace typewriters; they are also in the process of causing people to question the continued existence of physical books and newspapers, as well as movie theaters.

Our Prime Directive to know how to better survive and how to better express ourselves now has a new channel―Spatial Computing. With Spatial Computing, the uses of the technologies of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence eclipse those of the computer we know today. In the near future, we will no longer have to use a physical computer to do our work and browse the internet. And we will be able to do so much more with the three-dimensionality of Spatial Computing and speech recognition software. It turns out that our need to better express ourselves appears to include a need to experience a replicated reality.

Replicating of reality in the forms of paintings, fiction, and films, as well as other forms, has existed as long as human beings have had the need to express the conditions of both their individual and social existence in an effort to better understand themselves. Experiencing a replicated reality also turns out to be a very good way to achieve a new skill and to get knowledge in general. Spatial Computing is the next generation of imaging that is able to replicate reality, allowing the movement from two-dimensional imaging to three-dimensional. With three-dimensional imaging, the replication of reality is able to be more closely related to the reality it is trying to represent.

Human beings seem to get satisfaction out of presenting and experiencing narratives that have the appearance of being real. An example of this is a movie. It is difficult to say exactly why we get such pleasure out of viewing a "good" movie. Perhaps it is empathy, but the question still remains why empathizing with movie characters that appear to be real should make us feel good, much less entertained. With Spatial Computing, the visuals are even more true-to-life and we are able to move through them (Virtual Reality) or incorporate and manipulate non-real objects into our real world (Augmented Reality). Artificial Intelligence adds another layer to the existing reality by organizing previously unconnected data into meaningful systems that could then be utilized in Spatial Computing to feed our Prime Directive needs.

Photo credit: Robert Scoble. Here, you can see the slums and other residential buildings as seen from the Four Seasons luxury hotel in Mumbai, India. Billions of people live in similar accommodations around the world and they will experience the world far away soon in Spatial Computing devices.

Drivers and Benefits

The benefits of Spatial Computing play right into our Prime Directive of knowing how to better survive and how to better express ourselves through our creation and use of tools. Our need to have replicated three-dimensional worlds and objects in order to master our understanding and manner of expression is one that could be served by the software and technologies of Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Artificial Intelligence.

Noted investor and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen has told markets he has a contrarian view to Silicon Valley's belief that Augmented Reality represents a better investment than Virtual Reality. He noted that it is a privileged view―that in Silicon Valley, residents have tons of beautiful places within an hour's drive, from beaches to vineyards. Most people in the world, he said, don't have those advantages.

Walk through neighborhoods, even middle-class ones, and you will see millions living in small homes in high rises. Telling them that they will want to wear computing devices while walking through a beautiful area won't be hard. Instead, Andreessen sees a world where people will wear headsets to visit the natural beauty well out of reach somewhere else in the world. Even in the United States, only about 20 percent own a passport, so asking them to visit historic sites in, say, Egypt or Israel, won't be possible for most. We can, instead, take them there with Spatial Computing.

However, unlike Andreessen, we don't view the question of whether Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality will be the "winner" between the two. We see that, by the mid-2020s, our Spatial Computing devices will let you float between putting virtual things on top of, or replacing things, in the real world.

Where we are going with this argument is that the hunger for these devices, services, technologies, and experiences that Spatial Computing affords will probably be far greater among the billions who can't afford a private jet to fly them to a Davos, Switzerland ski vacation, or even afford a Tesla for a weekend jaunt to Napa or Yosemite. That seems to be Andreessen's greater point; that the investment opportunity here is grand because it not only will improve the lives of billions, but may lead to us saving ourselves with new education and new approaches to living, including being able to take courses using Virtual Reality and "travel" to different locations in the world without having to jump on an airplane.

However, an argument could be made that human beings are social―our social natures have aided us greatly in our need to survive and thrive and that Spatial Computing is too isolating. With Spatial Computing, though, we could choose to experience and learn something solo or networked with others.

Spatial Computing on its own can serve ...