This is a fascinating presentation by Michael Abrash, Chief Scientist at Oculus/Facebook, during the F8 conference. It’s about nothing less than augmenting the capabilities of the homo sapiens. He advocates full AR glasses and boy, they go far beyond Pokemon Go on your smartphone. Abrash refers to J.C.R. Licklider’s famous paper Man-Computer Symbiosis (1960) to underline the importance of the new developments.
The full AR glasses will give us better vision and hearing, will make us more intelligent, productive and connected. Yet they will be stylish, power efficient and socially acceptable. That will be necessary as they will be a constant part of our lives.
The glasses will know about our surroundings, history and needs. They will blend the physical and the virtual world according to our needs and desires.
Unfortunately, they do not yet exist. It will take breakthroughs in materials science, perceptual science, graphics, AI. So give it five or ten years, maybe longer – but imperfect versions will be available sooner and then develop just like happened with the personal computer.
It implies stuff like new brain-computer interfaces allowing us to think our instructions for our tiny but powerful artificial assistent. What Abrash did not say, is that there will be a divide between those owning and using the glasses efficiently and those who don’t have the glasses or don’t use them in a productive way.
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