When Google becomes your eyes.
We've all thought about it. We've debated it. We have proved it to a certain extent...
Is Google watching you?
But that's not the question I'm asking today. Right now we are in a singularity of technological advancements that will inevitably shift paradigms, achieve the impossible and ultimately redefine reality itself. We currently live in a world where the word magic will literally become a relevant concept. How else are you going to explain to your kids how all these gadgets work?
If I were to quote Joe Rogan: "Does anybody really know how any of this shit works?", would you have an answer to that question? If your five year old asked that question could you really explain to him or her how a processor works? How they can talk to their grandparents on the other side of the country with no visible wires? Or would you sum it up into one neat word that you know they will understand. "Magic."
I'm not underestimating children's growing capacity to learn, as I have witnessed plenty of kids doing things with smart phones and tablets, I myself would have difficulty achieving without someone guiding me. I work at a electronics retailer. Though I was late into the world of smart phones, buying my first only last year.
Though this only proves I haven't done my Apple sales courses online that I was supposed to for the last three years, I see that I'm in the same position now that my parents were in, that made me cringe every time I tried to explain to them how things on our home computer actually worked. Though they never learned, because they didn't want to. They had learnt just enough to check their E-mail and surf the web and that's all they needed it for. But I must admit, I still cringe when my dad sits hours on end playing digital cabals, which my grandfather used to do with real cards on the living room table.
Back to Google. I've used Google three times already while writing this piece. I've checked for several words which I had to translate from Norwegian to English because they had completely vanished from my own vocabulary. I had to check if my quoting of Joe Rogan was correct, which it wasn't ,and now I'm going to embed the video I heard him say it to not make this wall of text so long and boring, because we like pictures to go with our readables(which apparently isn't a word according to Google).
Will your kids ask you or Google, when they want to know something? Would they trust your answer, or would they run it by Google, then confront you with it, then cringe at your "funny" excuse? Perhaps it would be smart to let them know that Google is wrong sometimes, but not because they didn't provide the right answers. Google just provides "an answer" to your query and usually the top results are what you are looking for. But sometimes you do find people who are trying to convince you or your children of how reality "really" works.
How many causes do you see everyday now in your feed that turns out to be either highly misinformed or just straight out disinformation? In a time that practically everyone can paste some images together with a convincing title and description to gain support for their so-called "cause", maybe the best way to avoid unexpected surprises is to recommend not attributing "Likes" or commentary on "news" that only appear on social media sites.
Are you aware that your mobile smart phone is the 7th mass medium in the history of human language. It is. Which probably means that these mass mediums usually lasts for an extended period of time as the main way to indulge in basically anything relevant to society. Communication, literature, journalism, news, photography, video. Your cellphone has replaced hundreds of years of technology, even the computer itself. Only fifty years ago, a computer with the same storage capability of your smart phone, would take up warehouses, several stories high, on the scale of multiple football fields. In reality, back then they weren't even close to being that advanced, and you have that now, in your front pocket. Many people are even wearing the capabilities that first sent man to the moon, on their wrists. And now the smart phone is already about to be replaced after only a few decades running the show.
So the 8th Mass Medium. What could that be? Our cell-phones got harder, better, faster, stronger. Then they got weirder, smaller, thinner and then larger again for some reason. We watched entire movies on them. We started wearing them. We started wearing computers as fashion statements. How cyberpunk is that? How surreal would that be for someone in 1985? If you think about it, you will find it just as surreal now as when you first watched Back To The Future 2, when Marty McFly jumped out of his flying car(Aeromobil 3.0) in 2015, wearing his self-lacing Nike Sneakers(actually coming out this year), then being chased by Biff Tannen's grandson Griff who has bionic implants(Modern prosthesis, exo-skeleton suits) giving him enhanced strength, and his gang, one member called "Data" wearing a computerized breast plate that plays sound effects on command(Pebble). All of which does exist today, but perhaps not in the same version or availability the movie predicted.(Quick mention: Tony Hawk did in fact test a real hover board this year).
Google is our window to everything. It is our guide when we're lost. It answers most of our questions. It connects you to the rest of the world. It is damned near omnipotent at this point, if you exclude recent relevations about government espionage, but don't worry there is no such agency. Google and augmented reality go hand in hand. They have by far the best mapping capabilities and eventually their 3D tracking and scanning of environments will become so good that it's possible to use for augmented reality use. One day you will probably be able to navigate your way into a store to the specific item you are looking for. We will have smart stores, smart clothes, smart everything.
So all that to reveal that Augmented Reality is coming. And it is going to change everything. I have already seen it working with my own eyes. Virtual reality is not the 8th Mass Medium, but is still a large part of it and why we're here. It's recent exponential advancements and rise in popularity has shaken the industry, and now most of the larger gadget makers are developing VR hardware in one way or another.
Augmented Reality is when all digital information will be available visually layered on top of our own real world, in the shape of fashionable glasses that track where we are, even the orientation of our heads. Some of the glasses will probably track your eyes in order to know what you are looking at. But not to secretly know what you are doing, or to prosecute you for thought crime. In order to help you, and to make everything you want to do as easy as humanly possible. I mean... No human could possibly do that, but you hopefully get the point.
So what does it all mean? What kind of implications will this new medium have on our society? I do have some probable scenarios that I can mention:
Art. There will be plenty of it. You might even make some, wherever you are, and store it there, for someone else to see. The virtual/augmented world is indeed a new canvas. Your imagination is now truly the only limit as you will have infinite amounts of "paint" at your disposal.
Entertainment. Don't even get me started. If you haven't tried the Oculus Rift yet, then do that and you will automatically understand what it is capable of, and perhaps what Augmented Reality can do.
New genres will be born. You will have a VIP stage pass to your favorite band's sold out concert. You will sit floor center at NBA playoffs since there is an infinite number of seats available.
Communication: Not only will your children talk to their grandparents from across the world. They will run circles around them in your living room, and be able to laugh and smile, face to face.
Dating: Your teenage daughter's mirror will replace her laptop and webcam, as a window to some prepubescent jock's room. She will speed date guys in the same pace you can hear her snapchat with her friends. Yup. So you better get a parent lock on that shit ASAP. Then go back to your virtual harem. PS! Your white son is going battlerap real OG's in his mirror. It will make you cringe more than a drumset would. Don't throw anything at him though. You'll probably lose your job.
Social: Imagine this: You are walking down the street, alone. A friend calls up to chat. You accept the call. Then, the guy is literally walking right next to you, and you have eye contact. PS! He might be using a Master Chief avatar. You might be dressed for a furry convention, but quickly change to Pyramid Head, then swearing you were just scrolling through avatars.(Glasses could be equipped with face-tracking technology in order to project your facial expression onto an avatar)
Games: You will play Mortal Kombat as yourself. You will terrify your friends and family members with your merciless fury and brutal fatalities. Laws will be passed that forces owners of any structures or buildings with an accessible rooftop to install safety measures to prohibit freedom of movement by any person in order to counter reality vs virtual world differences. People's favorite thing to do in the virtual world is to jump off tall things. "Meh, I'm bored. Oh, I can jump off this roof to get tingly in my belly again. Tihihi-OH FUCK THIS IS REA..."
In all seriousness, games will probably be one of the biggest uses of Augmented Reality, and I can't wait to see what people come up with.
Abilities: There are probably sometimes you would wish you had night vision, or even superman vision that zooms in, and even see through walls. That is possible to some extent. I can assure you that if you can reveal what's under people's clothes using a few photoshop filters, you can do it live using these glasses. Someone just needs to make an app that does the same to video frames. Wait, that came out wrong. You can do what James Bond does...or whatever.
Pornography: Your physical accessibility to the hottest pornstars are about to increase a billion-fold. You will also simulate sex with virtual celebrities who had themselves scanned. "Sold out" has a brand new meaning.
Business: You will finally be able to show that holographic architectural design you always wanted, in actual size. Look out for giant ants. You will also be able to bring your work with you on public transport, whatever it is, and make changes via simple hand gestures that are tracked, in order to work harder...better, faster, longer.(I had to).
Advertisement: Hopefully they will be creative and entertaining when advertising in AR. I'm pretty sure there will be at least one virtual shark at some point.
AR: Someone will create apps or uses specifically for this technology that haven't been invented yet. They will probably be some of the most popular features of AR.
Note! These are just examples I actually think are possible with Augmented Reality.
Is Google watching you?
But that's not the question I'm asking today. Right now we are in a singularity of technological advancements that will inevitably shift paradigms, achieve the impossible and ultimately redefine reality itself. We currently live in a world where the word magic will literally become a relevant concept. How else are you going to explain to your kids how all these gadgets work?
If I were to quote Joe Rogan: "Does anybody really know how any of this shit works?", would you have an answer to that question? If your five year old asked that question could you really explain to him or her how a processor works? How they can talk to their grandparents on the other side of the country with no visible wires? Or would you sum it up into one neat word that you know they will understand. "Magic."
I'm not underestimating children's growing capacity to learn, as I have witnessed plenty of kids doing things with smart phones and tablets, I myself would have difficulty achieving without someone guiding me. I work at a electronics retailer. Though I was late into the world of smart phones, buying my first only last year.
Though this only proves I haven't done my Apple sales courses online that I was supposed to for the last three years, I see that I'm in the same position now that my parents were in, that made me cringe every time I tried to explain to them how things on our home computer actually worked. Though they never learned, because they didn't want to. They had learnt just enough to check their E-mail and surf the web and that's all they needed it for. But I must admit, I still cringe when my dad sits hours on end playing digital cabals, which my grandfather used to do with real cards on the living room table.
Back to Google. I've used Google three times already while writing this piece. I've checked for several words which I had to translate from Norwegian to English because they had completely vanished from my own vocabulary. I had to check if my quoting of Joe Rogan was correct, which it wasn't ,and now I'm going to embed the video I heard him say it to not make this wall of text so long and boring, because we like pictures to go with our readables(which apparently isn't a word according to Google).
Will your kids ask you or Google, when they want to know something? Would they trust your answer, or would they run it by Google, then confront you with it, then cringe at your "funny" excuse? Perhaps it would be smart to let them know that Google is wrong sometimes, but not because they didn't provide the right answers. Google just provides "an answer" to your query and usually the top results are what you are looking for. But sometimes you do find people who are trying to convince you or your children of how reality "really" works.
How many causes do you see everyday now in your feed that turns out to be either highly misinformed or just straight out disinformation? In a time that practically everyone can paste some images together with a convincing title and description to gain support for their so-called "cause", maybe the best way to avoid unexpected surprises is to recommend not attributing "Likes" or commentary on "news" that only appear on social media sites.
Are you aware that your mobile smart phone is the 7th mass medium in the history of human language. It is. Which probably means that these mass mediums usually lasts for an extended period of time as the main way to indulge in basically anything relevant to society. Communication, literature, journalism, news, photography, video. Your cellphone has replaced hundreds of years of technology, even the computer itself. Only fifty years ago, a computer with the same storage capability of your smart phone, would take up warehouses, several stories high, on the scale of multiple football fields. In reality, back then they weren't even close to being that advanced, and you have that now, in your front pocket. Many people are even wearing the capabilities that first sent man to the moon, on their wrists. And now the smart phone is already about to be replaced after only a few decades running the show.
So the 8th Mass Medium. What could that be? Our cell-phones got harder, better, faster, stronger. Then they got weirder, smaller, thinner and then larger again for some reason. We watched entire movies on them. We started wearing them. We started wearing computers as fashion statements. How cyberpunk is that? How surreal would that be for someone in 1985? If you think about it, you will find it just as surreal now as when you first watched Back To The Future 2, when Marty McFly jumped out of his flying car(Aeromobil 3.0) in 2015, wearing his self-lacing Nike Sneakers(actually coming out this year), then being chased by Biff Tannen's grandson Griff who has bionic implants(Modern prosthesis, exo-skeleton suits) giving him enhanced strength, and his gang, one member called "Data" wearing a computerized breast plate that plays sound effects on command(Pebble). All of which does exist today, but perhaps not in the same version or availability the movie predicted.(Quick mention: Tony Hawk did in fact test a real hover board this year).
Google is our window to everything. It is our guide when we're lost. It answers most of our questions. It connects you to the rest of the world. It is damned near omnipotent at this point, if you exclude recent relevations about government espionage, but don't worry there is no such agency. Google and augmented reality go hand in hand. They have by far the best mapping capabilities and eventually their 3D tracking and scanning of environments will become so good that it's possible to use for augmented reality use. One day you will probably be able to navigate your way into a store to the specific item you are looking for. We will have smart stores, smart clothes, smart everything.
So all that to reveal that Augmented Reality is coming. And it is going to change everything. I have already seen it working with my own eyes. Virtual reality is not the 8th Mass Medium, but is still a large part of it and why we're here. It's recent exponential advancements and rise in popularity has shaken the industry, and now most of the larger gadget makers are developing VR hardware in one way or another.
Augmented Reality is when all digital information will be available visually layered on top of our own real world, in the shape of fashionable glasses that track where we are, even the orientation of our heads. Some of the glasses will probably track your eyes in order to know what you are looking at. But not to secretly know what you are doing, or to prosecute you for thought crime. In order to help you, and to make everything you want to do as easy as humanly possible. I mean... No human could possibly do that, but you hopefully get the point.
So what does it all mean? What kind of implications will this new medium have on our society? I do have some probable scenarios that I can mention:
Art. There will be plenty of it. You might even make some, wherever you are, and store it there, for someone else to see. The virtual/augmented world is indeed a new canvas. Your imagination is now truly the only limit as you will have infinite amounts of "paint" at your disposal.
Andromeda in our night sky, in approx. 3 billion years
Mood: You'll be able to change your cloudy grey day to a beautiful sunset, wind the star sky time 3-4 billion years into the future to see the Andromeda galaxy take up the entire night sky as it collides with our Milky Way galaxy. Or just fill the sky with flame-spewing dragons.
Entertainment. Don't even get me started. If you haven't tried the Oculus Rift yet, then do that and you will automatically understand what it is capable of, and perhaps what Augmented Reality can do.
New genres will be born. You will have a VIP stage pass to your favorite band's sold out concert. You will sit floor center at NBA playoffs since there is an infinite number of seats available.
Communication: Not only will your children talk to their grandparents from across the world. They will run circles around them in your living room, and be able to laugh and smile, face to face.
Dating: Your teenage daughter's mirror will replace her laptop and webcam, as a window to some prepubescent jock's room. She will speed date guys in the same pace you can hear her snapchat with her friends. Yup. So you better get a parent lock on that shit ASAP. Then go back to your virtual harem. PS! Your white son is going battlerap real OG's in his mirror. It will make you cringe more than a drumset would. Don't throw anything at him though. You'll probably lose your job.
Social: Imagine this: You are walking down the street, alone. A friend calls up to chat. You accept the call. Then, the guy is literally walking right next to you, and you have eye contact. PS! He might be using a Master Chief avatar. You might be dressed for a furry convention, but quickly change to Pyramid Head, then swearing you were just scrolling through avatars.(Glasses could be equipped with face-tracking technology in order to project your facial expression onto an avatar)
Games: You will play Mortal Kombat as yourself. You will terrify your friends and family members with your merciless fury and brutal fatalities. Laws will be passed that forces owners of any structures or buildings with an accessible rooftop to install safety measures to prohibit freedom of movement by any person in order to counter reality vs virtual world differences. People's favorite thing to do in the virtual world is to jump off tall things. "Meh, I'm bored. Oh, I can jump off this roof to get tingly in my belly again. Tihihi-OH FUCK THIS IS REA..."
In all seriousness, games will probably be one of the biggest uses of Augmented Reality, and I can't wait to see what people come up with.
Abilities: There are probably sometimes you would wish you had night vision, or even superman vision that zooms in, and even see through walls. That is possible to some extent. I can assure you that if you can reveal what's under people's clothes using a few photoshop filters, you can do it live using these glasses. Someone just needs to make an app that does the same to video frames. Wait, that came out wrong. You can do what James Bond does...or whatever.
Pornography: Your physical accessibility to the hottest pornstars are about to increase a billion-fold. You will also simulate sex with virtual celebrities who had themselves scanned. "Sold out" has a brand new meaning.
Business: You will finally be able to show that holographic architectural design you always wanted, in actual size. Look out for giant ants. You will also be able to bring your work with you on public transport, whatever it is, and make changes via simple hand gestures that are tracked, in order to work harder...better, faster, longer.(I had to).
Advertisement: Hopefully they will be creative and entertaining when advertising in AR. I'm pretty sure there will be at least one virtual shark at some point.
AR: Someone will create apps or uses specifically for this technology that haven't been invented yet. They will probably be some of the most popular features of AR.
Note! These are just examples I actually think are possible with Augmented Reality.
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