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In 20-30 years, when AR is fully mature, and AR headsets are the size and weight of a pair of glasses, or possibly even contact lenses, with a full field of view projection, it will radically alter our society.
No More Stuff / Manufacturing Dies:
All, or most, input-output electronic devices will become obsolete. Why buy a 70-inch flatscreen, when you can project an infinitely large screen at will? No more keyboards, mice, touchscreens, TV's, tablets, or cell phones. You'll just summon a virtual phone when you need to make a call. Screen not big enough for your facetime session, just enlarge it to life-sized, or project a 3-d image of the person you're calling.
Motivational Factors for Accumulating Wealth are Removed or Reduced:
What's the difference between a billionaire and someone who is just making ends meet? For their physical bodies, not much. Both live in climate-controlled comfort. Both have enough food, water, chairs, bedding. The real difference comes as perception. The Billionaire drives his Masarati home through his private golf course, past the helipad, to his mansion. The working stiff puts on his AR glasses, and does the exact same thing. He loads an AR program that turns his 500sqft apartment into a 24,000 sqft mansion, his beater into a Bentley, and his wife into a supermodel.
Travel and Destination Vacations are things of the Past:
Why spend thousands of dollars and 3 hours getting to the airport, 14 hours in coach, and 10 more hours bussing hiking and climbing to Machu Pichu, when you can just turn your back yard into it? Or, if you like some parts of the journey, you can simulate them at the gym. Or at home.
If you think people give up too much of their real-world lives staring at the tiny world-in-a-box of their smartphones, get ready, because when AR is mature, society is going to be altered in ways we can't even fathom.
In 20-30 years, when AR is fully mature, and AR headsets are the size and weight of a pair of glasses, or possibly even contact lenses, with a full field of view projection, it will radically alter our society.
That timetable is way to slow as in 20-30 years we will have nanotechnology and be merging with the tech. In the next decade we will AR the size of contacts.
In 20-30 years, when AR is fully mature, and AR headsets are the size and weight of a pair of glasses, or possibly even contact lenses, with a full field of view projection, it will radically alter our society.
That timetable is way to slow as in 20-30 years we will have nanotechnology and be merging with the tech. In the next decade we will AR the size of contacts.
I think the OP neglects to consider that this technology will likely be suppressed to some degree. There is just no way they are going to allow the general public access to this kind of technology, it would have too much of a destructive impact on other industries.
Its technology like this, that the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 was created and designed to suppress.
Looking at the AR capabilities seen in the latest iPhone, AR would be commonplace right now if socially inept Silicon Valley designers didn't design Google Glass as a privacy- and attention span-destroying device.
I'm really not sure how clumsy small computers would look like today, if the late Jobs didn't put all the technology of the 2000s together into a practical design that works for society. Even then, the smartphone has been a social detriment in some ways.
But it's not going to take 30 years and it's not going to be blocked. The tech is more or less available now, and waiting for a great designer to make it practical.
AR will migrate from the held smartphone to the headset to the goggles to the glasses to the contacts to the ocular implants to the neurocannula-based BCI pumping it straight into the brain to something probably even more bizarre we can't comprehend. As people spend more and more time with AR, they will naturally gravitate toward and then demand smaller form factors and then more permanent forms.
Around about the goggles / glasses level it will supplant the smartphone as The Thing Nobody Ever Leaves Home Without. People will feel naked without their digital assistant constantly interpreting (and altering) the world around them. AR will be much of what people spend their day "doing."
It will have long since ceased to be some sort of HUD-like 2D overlay and will instead employ fully-rendered 3D graphics that fully understand the dimensions of the world in realtime. The "screens" will be capable of anything from complete transparency to complete opaqueness per pixel, FOVs will be in the 160 degree range, refresh rates will top 240Hz, and integrated eye-tracking will collect information on everything you ever look at. Ads will be completely personalized, real-time rendered, impossible to avoid, and difficult to resist.
AR will in fact be required to access many of the features of modern life. There will be persistent shared structures that only exist when viewed with AR hardware. Some people will pay for the ability to see more than others. Holoportation will emerge as a way to visit, meet, play, etc. Those who eschew AR or can't afford it will be left far behind. Also being left far behind will be any semblance of privacy. Apps will emerge that digitally "nudify" others. People will stop *really* looking at each other or at least really *knowing* if another person is *really* looking at them. People will become addicted to what they see in AR. Some young people will start to make... different decisions, such as having a relationship only through AR (either with a human on the other side or with an AI) or almost completely replacing visual reality with AR enhancements and transformations.
AI will anticipate what you want to see. Its algorithmic superiority will know better than you do. Eventually brain computer interfaces will read (and record) thoughts. "Hate thought" legislation will slowly start to make its way through society. AR will come to be viewed as the real world. It will seem unimaginable that humans got along without this.
In 20-30 years, when AR is fully mature, and AR headsets are the size and weight of a pair of glasses, or possibly even contact lenses, with a full field of view projection, it will radically alter our society.
That timetable is way to slow as in 20-30 years we will have nanotechnology and be merging with the tech. In the next decade we will AR the size of contacts.
I hope so. I welcome our robot overlords and can't wait to hang out all day in my little white cubicle.
Reality is going to get blurrier and more malleable by far.
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