AUGMENTED REALITY You possibly haven’t realised it, but you’ve already used an augmented reality (AR) app. Have you downloaded the Pokemon Go mobile app game? It was an augmented reality moment if you saw a Pikachu walking along your neighbourhood through your phone. Similarly, using AR technologies, you might add an animated ‘Sticker’ to a video in Snapchat, such as a wagging dog’s tongue on a friend’s well-posed pout. But this is only the beginning. While the screen may never completely disappear, improvements in augmented reality will lead to gadgets that push the screen to the periphery of your vision, transforming displays into digital windows and allowing virtual objects to appear in the real world.
DEMOCRATIZING EXPERTIZE
The keyboard, computer monitor, and cubicle are the three mainstays of the modern workplace. We were released from the office by the personal computer, laptop, and fibre internet, but not completely. Augmented reality has the potential
to completely transform the way we work, play, and live. Our interaction with both the physical and digital worlds will fundamentally shift with an AR system connected to our helmets and our hands free to engage within both the actual and graphically represented domains at the same time. Suddenly, an architect can walk into an empty lot and call up digital skyscraper designs and see where they will exist in the actual world, as though towering into the clouds, with the wave of a hand. An international student may have his new overseas textbook magically translated into a language he understands – at least through an augmented reality lens – and a rocket scientist can transfer her latest propulsion system from a desk-sized model to the launchpad without burning a drop of fuel. AR gadgets will also allow people to become generalists for the first time since the hunter-gatherer era. You would have a highly specialised skill set unique to executing tasks within your chosen career, whether
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