Predictions on the future of digital media — from techcrunch.com by Peter Csathy
Excerpt:
It’s pundit time — this time, digital media style. Last year I predicted challenges to YouTube’s dominance in online video, a beginning of cord cutting and the unbundling of video services, and an explosion in short form video content. This year the media landscape will continue to shift as VR grows up and consolidation takes over.
The tech that will change your life in 2016 — from wsj.com by Geoffrey A. Fowler and Joanna Stern
Gadgets, breakthroughs and ideas we think will define the state of the art in the year ahead
Excerpts:
Technology trends 2016 — from thefuturesagency.com by Rudy de Waele
Excerpt:
It’s this time of the year again for everyone in the business to release their yearly predictions. In order to save you some time, we collected all the most important and relevant trends – from the sources that matter, in one post.
The trends have been collected by The Futures Agency partner, speaker and content curator, Rudy de Waele, and were originally published on the shift 2020 Brain Food blog and newsletter.
CES 2016: Smart homes, smart cars, virtual reality — from cnbc.com by Harriet Taylor
Excerpt:
Nevertheless, there are still some distinct themes this year: Products that highlight the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), the connected home, autos and virtual reality will all have a big presence.
From smart to intelligent: 2016 AV trends — from avnetwork.com by Jonathan Owens
Excerpts:
Cloud, virtual reality among top tech trends for 2016 — from news.investors.com by Patrick Seitz
Excerpts:
Virtual reality, robot companions and wraparound smartphones: Top 5 tech trends due in 2016 — from scmp.com by Jack Liu
The headset cometh: A virtual reality content primer — from gigaom.com by
Excerpt:
When we talk about VR, we tend to talk in broad strokes. “Experiences,” we call them, as if that term is somehow covers and conveys the depth and disparity that exists between gaming, watching, and interacting with VR content. The reality of virtual reality, however, is not so easily categorized or described.
VR content is the big blanket term that clumsily and imprecisely covers large and vastly divergent portions of the content market as it stands. VR games, immersive video, and virtual cinema all fall under “VR content”, but they’re fundamentally different experiences, possibly appealing to very different portions of a potential mainstream VR market.
6 ways work will change in 2016 — from fastcompany.com by Jared Lindzon
Workplace trends for 2016 will be set in large part by what’s happening in the freelance world right now.
Excerpt:
Most major workplace trends don’t evolve overnight, and if you know where to look, you can already witness their approach.
Many of the trends that will come into focus in 2016 already exist today, but their significance is expected to grow and become mainstream in the year to come.
While such trends used to be set by the world’s largest companies, today many are championed by the smallest. Freelancers and independent employees need to stay ahead of future needs to ensure they are up to date with the most in-demand skills. Therefore, activity in the freelance market often serves as an early indication of the growing needs of traditional businesses.
At the same time, large organizations today are under greater threat of disruption, requiring early adoption and a heightened awareness of the surrounding business environment.
Here are some of the workplace trends that are expected to have far-reaching effects in 2016, from the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies to the home offices, cafes, and coworking spaces of the freelance economy.
7 top tech trends impacting innovators in 2016 — from innovationexcellence.com by Chuck Brooks
Excerpts:
Related:
Addendum on 1/13/16:
Topics covered:
Special Report: 2016 Top Tech to Watch
Spectrum’s annual special report for the technologies to watch this year
MIT’s amazing new app lets you program any object — from fastcodesign.com
The Reality Editor is a Minority Report style AR app that makes programming your smart home as easy as connecting the dots.
Take me away! Elderly home residents given virtual reality goggles to help them feel like they are travelling the world — from dailymail.co.uk by Belinda Cleary
NASA partners with Microsoft to provide holographic computing in space — from seriouswonder.com by B.J. Murphy
Excerpt:
Partnering with multinational technology company Microsoft, NASA has since been engaging with their astronauts to use HoloLens headsets to help them make complex computations and provide them with virtual aid as they work inside the ISS. Labeled Project Sidekick, this form of space-based holographic computing will help empower astronauts by allowing them to achieve greater autonomy in their work as they explore and connect back home at NASA headquarters.
With the Cygnus delivery of the HoloLens headsets, expect holographic computing to become a crucial facet of future space exploration – one more item to check off of our list on, “How to become more like Star Trek.”
How to try virtual reality today without breaking the bank — from bgr.com by Jacob Siegal
Excerpt:
2016 might be the year that virtual reality finally takes hold in the tech world. Sony, Microsoft and Oculus VR are all planning to launch their own hardware before the end of next year, with tons of developers already hard at work on games, apps and other software to ensure that VR hits the ground running.
But if you don’t want to wait until next year to see what VR has to offer, you can take a sneak peek at the innovations today without putting a strain on your wallet.
Breaking Down Billion-Dollar AR/VR Investment In The Last 12 Months — from techcrunch.com by Tim Merel
Which VR Headset Holds the Pole Position? — from statista.com by Felix Richter
The show goes on in Paris – through augmented-reality glasses — from theguardian.com by Barbara Casassus
If your French doesn’t go beyond bonjour, you can still enjoy a night at a Parisian theatre thanks to new glasses that provide simultaneous translations
Excerpt:
It’s Saturday night at Le Comédia theatre in central Paris and I’m staring at the stage through square plastic glasses. While the actors in the musical Mistinguett, Reine des Années Folles sing boisterously in French, the words appear simultaneously in English on a small screen in the right-hand lens. Though it’s not the same as watching the show unfettered, I find it surprisingly easy to follow the translated dialogue along with the action.
.
Also see Immersive VREducation’s:
ER VR Trailer – Virtual Reality Medical Training Simulation
Virtual-reality lab explores new kinds of immersive learning — from chronicle.com by Ellen Wexler
Excerpt:
That can have implications in distance learning, he said. For students attending class via webcam or video lecture, the video is two-dimensional, and the audio doesn’t sound as it would if they were in a real classroom. Mr. Duraiswami thinks the virtual-reality technology could help the experience feel more immersive. “If all you’re seeing is a bunch of things in front of you, you’re not as immersed,” Mr. Duraiswami said. “You want the instructor to feel as if they’re right in front of you.”
10 killer media applications enabled by ‘virtual reality’ headsets — from eweek.com by Mike Elgan
Virtual reality headsets can do much more than ‘virtual reality,’ a technical term that is badly defined in most news reports. Here are 10 rapidly developing applications.
Deakin University to launch virtual and augmented reality hub — from cio.com.au by Rebecca Merrett
Industry partners, as well and students and staff, can get their hands on latest virtual/augmented reality tech
Excerpt:
Deakin University will launch an Interactive Digital Centre Hub in Melbourne CBD in the first half of 2016, which will allow industry partners to access the latest virtual and augmented reality technology. Partnering with EON Reality, more than US$10 million has been poured into the facility and will be the first of dedicated centre to virtual and augmented reality in the Asian region. Having a strong group of researchers in virtual reality, Deakin University decided to open a hub to facilitate working with industry and host education programs and courses in this field.
Virtual reality could finally get people to care about climate change — from techinsider.io by Chris Weller
Excerpt:
As the founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Jeremy Bailenson firmly believes that statistics don’t make people care about issues.
Experiences do.
That’s why Bailenson has spent the last few years developing an underwater virtual reality (VR) experience that shows people firsthand how climate change impacts ocean health.
All the data in the world won’t make a problem seem real unless people care about it on an emotional level, he says. According to Bailenson, virtual reality solves that problem without creating new ones.
Virtual reality in 2016: The 10 biggest trends to watch — from techrepublic.com by Erin Carson
2016 promises to be a watershed year for virtual reality as a commercial product. Here’s what to expect.
Revolutionary tech for the real world — from createtomorrow.co.uk
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
AR is also highly effective for education and training says Ronald Azuma who leads the AR team at Intel Labs. Why? “Because it makes instructions easier to understand by displaying them directly over the real-world objects that require manipulation, thus removing the cognitive load and ambiguity in spatially transforming directions from traditional media like manuals, text, images and videos into the situation at hand.”
Samsung launches Gear VR virtual reality headset in Australia, promises 360-degree web browsing — from news.com.au
AUSTRALIAN phone users will be able to play virtual reality games, watch 360-degree films, and navigate the web using their eyes as Samsung launches its third virtual reality headset.
CES 2016: driverless cars and virtual reality to dominate at world’s biggest technology show — from mirror.co.uk
The world’s biggest technology showcase kicks off in Las Vegas on 6 January 2016. Here’s what we know about what will be happening at the Consumer Electronics Show
Should your institution move into the Augmentarium future? — from ecampusnews.com by Ron Bethke
The University of Maryland, College Park, is leading the way in studying the innovative applications of augmented and virtual reality across a wide range of fields
Excerpt:
Sundance 2016 dominated by VR, over 30 experiences listed — from vrfocus.com
Excerpt:
This year’s Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah was a surprise hit for virtual reality (VR) technology. It was here that Oculus VR revealed its new film-focused division, Oculus Story Studio, while plenty of other filmmakers and story tellers showcased their own projects using head-mounted displays (HMDs) in the festival’s New Frontier section. That section is set to return for the 2016 edition of the festival from 21st – 31st January, and is this time utterly dominated by VR experiences.
Virtual reality for all, finally — from scientificamerican.com by Larry Greenemeier
Will the new generation of headsets hitting the consumer electronics market deliver enhanced virtual-reality experiences at more affordable prices?
Excerpt:
You can be forgiven for rolling your eyes at the latest round of promises that virtual reality has finally arrived for the masses. Tech companies have been hanging their hats on that one for decades without much success, due to high prices and poorly rendered graphics that have given people headaches—literally.
Despite these missteps, a new generation of virtual-reality tech targeted at consumers has begun to hit the market, most prominently with Samsung’s $100 Gear VR visor released in late November. Both Gear VR and Google Cardboard—which starts at less than $20 and was launched in 2014—rely on a smartphone clipped or slid into their respective visors. The headset’s binocularlike lenses—between the phone and wearer—help deliver a 3-D VR experience. That makes the gadgets a relatively low-risk investment for consumers and enables tech companies to gauge public demand for virtual reality in advance of devices such as ones from Oculus, Sony and HTC slated for next year that feature more sophisticated embedded sensors and displays.
…
Now that VR headsets no longer cost tens of thousands of dollars the door is open for educational and social applications that are true to virtual reality’s roots, allowing people to learn and interact in digital classrooms and playgrounds.
Here’s what virtual reality means for kids stuck in the hospital — from techcrunch.com by Drew Olanoff
Excerpt:
Virtual reality is here to stay and it’s more important than just playing a game or watching a boxing match in a more immersive way. It could, and will, change lives. Imagine this kind of happiness in children’s hospitals everywhere, all of the time. Then think about how doctors can train for surgery virtually. Pretty amazing stuff, eh?
Addendum on 12/20/15:
From DSC:
Below are some further items that discuss the need for some frameworks, policies, institutes, research, etc. that deal with a variety of game-changing technologies that are quickly coming down the pike (if they aren’t already upon on). We need such things to help us create a positive future.
Also see Part I of this thread of thinking entitled, “The need for ethics, morals, policies, & serious reflection about what kind of future we want has never been greater!“ There have been so many other items that came out since that posting, I felt like I needed to add another one here.
What kind of future do we want? How are we going to insure that we get there?
As the saying goes…”Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.” Or another saying comes to my mind…”What could possibly go wrong with this? It’s a done deal.”
While some of the items below should have very positive impacts on society, I do wonder how long it will take the hackers — the ones who are bent on wreaking havoc — to mess up some of these types of applications…with potentially deadly consequences? Security-related concerns must be dealt with here.
5 amazing and alarming things that may be done with your DNA — from washingtonpost.com by Matt McFarland
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Venter is leading efforts to use digital technology to analyze humans in ways we never have before, and the results will have huge implications for society. The latest findings he described are currently being written up for scientific publications. Venter didn’t want to usurp the publications, so he wouldn’t dive into extensive detail of how his team has made these breakthroughs. But what he did share offers an exciting and concerning overview of what lies ahead for humanity. There are social, legal and ethical implications to start considering. Here are five examples of how digitizing DNA will change the human experience:
These are the decisions the Pentagon wants to leave to robots — from defenseone.com by Patrick Tucker
The U.S. military believes its battlefield edge will increasingly depend on automation and artificial intelligence.
Excerpt:
Conducting cyber defensive operations, electronic warfare, and over-the-horizon targeting. “You cannot have a human operator operating at human speed fighting back at determined cyber tech,” Work said. “You are going to need have a learning machine that does that.” He did not say whether the Pentagon is pursuing the autonomous or automatic deployment of offensive cyber capabilities, a controversial idea to be sure. He also highlighted a number of ways that artificial intelligence could help identify new waveforms to improve electronic warfare.
Britain should lead way on genetically engineered babies, says Chief Scientific Adviser — from.telegraph.co.uk by Sarah Knapton
Sir Mark Walport, who advises the government on scientific matters, said it could be acceptable to genetically edit human embryos
Excerpt:
Last week more than 150 scientists and campaigners called for a worldwide ban on the practice, claiming it could ‘irrevocably alter the human species’ and lead to a world where inequality and discrimination were ‘inscribed onto the human genome.’
But at a conference in London [on 12/8/15], Sir Mark Walport, who advises the government on scientific matters, said he believed there were ‘circumstances’ in which the genetic editing of human embyros could be ‘acceptable’.
Cyborg Future: Engineers Build a Chip That Is Part Biological and Part Synthetic — from futurism.com
Excerpt:
Engineers have succeeded in combining an integrated chip with an artificial lipid bilayer membrane containing ATP-powered ion pumps, paving the way for more such artificial systems that combine the biological with the mechanical down the road.
Robots expected to run half of Japan by 2035 — from engadget.com by Andrew Tarantola
Something-something ‘robot overlords’.
Excerpt:
Data analysts Nomura Research Institute (NRI), led by researcher Yumi Wakao, figure that within the next 20 years, nearly half of all jobs in Japan could be accomplished by robots. Working with Professor Michael Osborne from Oxford University, who had previously investigated the same matter in both the US and UK, the NRI team examined more than 600 jobs and found that “up to 49 percent of jobs could be replaced by computer systems,” according to Wakao.
Cambridge University is opening a £10 million centre to study the impact of AI on humanity — from businessinsider.com by Sam Shead
Excerpt:
Cambridge University announced on [12/3/15] that it is opening a new £10 million research centre to study the impact of artificial intelligence on humanity.
The 806-year-old university said the centre, being funded with a grant from non-profit foundation The Leverhulme Trust, will explore the opportunities and challenges facing humanity as a result of further developments in artificial intelligence.
Tech leaders launch nonprofit to save the world from killer robots — from
Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and other tech titans have invested $1 billion in a nonprofit that would help direct artificial intelligence technology toward positive human impact.
2016 will be a pivotal year for social robots — from therobotreport.com by Frank Tobe
1,000 Peppers are selling each month from a big-dollar venture between SoftBank, Alibaba and Foxconn; Jibo just raised another $16 million as it prepares to deliver 7,500+ units in Mar/Apr of 2016; and Buddy, Rokid, Sota and many others are poised to deliver similar forms of social robots.
Excerpt:
These new robots, and the proliferation of mobile robot butlers, guides and kiosks, promise to recognize your voice and face and help you plan your calendar, provide reminders, take pictures of special moments, text, call and videoconference, order fast food, keep watch on your house or office, read recipes, play games, read emotions and interact accordingly, and the list goes on. They are attempting to be analogous to a sharp administrative assistant that knows your schedule, contacts and interests and engages with you about them, helping you stay informed, connected and active.
IBM opens its artificial mind to the world — from fastcompany.com by Sean Captain
IBM is letting companies plug into its Watson artificial intelligence engine to make sense of speech, text, photos, videos, and sensor data.
Excerpt:
Artificial intelligence is the big, oft-misconstrued catchphrase of the day, making headlines recently with the launch of the new OpenAI organization, backed by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other tech luminaries. AI is neither a synonym for killer robots nor a technology of the future, but one that is already finding new signals in the vast noise of collected data, ranging from weather reports to social media chatter to temperature sensor readings. Today IBM has opened up new access to its AI system, called Watson, with a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow other companies and organizations to feed their data into IBM’s big brain for analysis.
GE wants to give industrial machines their own social network with Predix Cloud — from fastcompany.com by Sean Captain
GE is selling a new service that promises to predict when a machine will break down…so technicians can preemptively fix it.
Foresight 2020: The future is filled with 50 billion connected devices — from ibmbigdatahub.com by Erin Monday
Excerpt:
By 2020, there will be over 50 billion connected devices generating continuous data.
This figure is staggering, but is it really a surprise? The world has come a long way from 1992, when the number of computers was roughly equivalent to the population of San Jose. Today, in 2015, there are more connected devices out there than there are human beings. Ubiquitous connectivity is very nearly a reality. Every day, we get a little closer to a time where businesses, governments and consumers are connected by a fluid stream of data and analytics. But what’s driving all this growth?
Designing robots that learn as effortlessly as babies — from singularityhub.com by Shelly Fan
Excerpt:
A wide-eyed, rosy-cheeked, babbling human baby hardly looks like the ultimate learning machine.
But under the hood, an 18-month-old can outlearn any state-of-the-art artificial intelligence algorithm.
Their secret sauce?
They watch; they imitate; and they extrapolate.
Artificial intelligence researchers have begun to take notice. This week, two separate teams dipped their toes into cognitive psychology and developed new algorithms that teach machines to learn like babies. One instructs computers to imitate; the other, to extrapolate.
Researchers have found a new way to get machines to learn faster — from fortune.com by Hilary Brueck
Excerpt:
An international team of data scientists is proud to announce the very latest in machine learning: they’ve built a program that learns… programs. That may not sound impressive at first blush, but making a machine that can learn based on a single example is something that’s been extremely hard to do in the world of artificial intelligence. Machines don’t learn like humans—not as fast, and not as well. And even with this research, they still can’t.
Team showcase how good Watson is at learning — from adigaskell.org
Excerpt:
Artificial intelligence has undoubtedly come a long way in the last few years, but there is still much to be done to make it intuitive to use. IBM’s Watson has been one of the most well known exponents during this time, but despite it’s initial success, there are issues to overcome with it.
A team led by Georgia Tech are attempting to do just that. They’re looking to train Watson to get better at returning answers to specific queries.
Why The Internet of Things will drive a Knowledge Revolution. — from linkedin.com by David Evans
Excerpt:
As these machines inevitably connect to the Internet, they will ultimately connect to each other so they can share, and collaborate on their own findings. In fact, in 2014 machines got their own ”World Wide Web” called RoboEarth, in which to share knowledge with one another. …
The implications of all of this are at minimum twofold:
What we choose to do with this newfound knowledge is of course up to us. We are about to face some significant challenges at scales we have yet to experience.
Drone squad to be launched by Tokyo police — from bbc.com
Excerpt:
A drone squad, designed to locate and – if necessary – capture nuisance drones flown by members of the public, is to be launched by police in Tokyo.
An advance in artificial intelligence rivals human abilities — from todayonline.com by John Markoff
Excerpt:
NEW YORK — Computer researchers reported artificial-intelligence advances [on Dec 10] that surpassed human capabilities for a narrow set of vision-related tasks.
The improvements are noteworthy because so-called machine-vision systems are becoming commonplace in many aspects of life, including car-safety systems that detect pedestrians and bicyclists, as well as in video game controls, Internet search and factory robots.
Somewhat related:
Novo Nordisk, IBM Watson Health to create ‘virtual doctor’ — from wsj.com by Denise Roland
Software could dispense treatment advice for diabetes patients
Excerpt:
Novo Nordisk A/S is teaming up with IBM Watson Health, a division of International Business Machines Corp., to create a “virtual doctor” for diabetes patients that could dispense treatment advice such as insulin dosage.
The Danish diabetes specialist hopes to use IBM’s supercomputer platform, Watson, to analyze health data from diabetes patients to help them manage their disease.
Why Google’s new quantum computer could launch an artificial intelligence arms race — from washingtonpost.com
8 industries robots will completely transform by 2025 — from techinsider.io
Addendums on 12/17/15:
Russia and China are building highly autonomous killer robots — from businessinsider.com.au by Danielle Muoi
Excerpt:
Russia and China are creating highly autonomous weapons, more commonly referred to as killer robots, and it’s putting pressure on the Pentagon to keep up, according to US Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work. During a national-security forum on Monday, Work said that China and Russia are heavily investing in a roboticized army, according to a report from Defense One.
Your Algorithmic Self Meets Super-Intelligent AI — from techcrunch.com by Jarno M. Koponen
Excerpt:
At the same time, your data and personalized experiences are used to develop and train the machine learning systems that are powering the Siris, Watsons, Ms and Cortanas. Be it a speech recognition solution or a recommendation algorithm, your actions and personal data affect how these sophisticated systems learn more about you and the world around you.
The less explicit fact is that your diverse interactions — your likes, photos, locations, tags, videos, comments, route selections, recommendations and ratings — feed learning systems that could someday transform into super–intelligent AIs with unpredictable consequences.
As of today, you can’t directly affect how your personal data is used in these systems
Addendum on 12/20/15:
Addendum on 12/21/15:
Addendum on 1/13/16:
The North Face uses IBM’s Watson to make online shopping smarter — from thestreet.com by Rebecca Borison
Excerpt:
Aiming to solve one of e-commerce’s challenges of not offering personalized service, VF Corp’s “The North Face” on Monday launched a new online shopping tool using IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence system.
The tool, which is powered by Fluid and called XPS, guides a consumer through the online store to better find what he or she is looking for.
E-commerce today doesn’t generally give the personal attention a consumer might get when he walks into a store and is greeted by a human being. This new tool seeks to address that challenge.
Watch this robot solve a Rubik’s Cube in a world record 2.39 seconds — from singularityhub.com by Jason Dorrier
.
Novo Nordisk, IBM Watson Health to create ‘virtual doctor’ — from wsj.com by Denise Roland
Software could dispense treatment advice for diabetes patients
Excerpt:
Novo Nordisk A/S is teaming up with IBM Watson Health, a division of International Business Machines Corp., to create a “virtual doctor” for diabetes patients that could dispense treatment advice such as insulin dosage.
The Danish diabetes specialist hopes to use IBM’s supercomputer platform, Watson, to analyze health data from diabetes patients to help them manage their disease.
CES 2016: driverless cars and virtual reality to dominate at world’s biggest technology show — from mirror.co.uk
The world’s biggest technology showcase kicks off in Las Vegas on 6 January 2016. Here’s what we know about what will be happening at the Consumer Electronics Show
Build an automatic cookie decorating machine with LEGO Mindstorms — from lifehacker.com by Patrick Allan
Excerpt:
Decorating cookies by hand can be a pleasant activity, but with a LEGO Mindstorms set, you can crank out a bunch of perfectly iced cookies in no time at all.
World’s First Holographic Navigation System — from machinetomachinemagazine.com
Excerpt:
PARIS – The United States is the first commercial market to receive two innovative telematics devices that apply aerospace technology to land navigation. WayRay Navion is an augmented reality navigation system that projects holographic GPS imagery and driver notifications onto the windshield of a car, a first-of-its-kind for the automobile aftermarket. WayRay Element is a smart tracker that can be plugged into the diagnostics port of any automobile for monitoring driver performance, safety and fuel efficiency. The solutions arrive courtesy of WayRay, a Swiss startup dedicated to the advancement of connected car telematics, and Orange Business Services, a B2B global telecom operator and IT solutions integrator.
From DSC:
Back in July of 2012, I put forth a vision that I called Learning from the Living [Class]Room.
![The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV](http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian-July-2012.jpg)
It’s a vision that involves a multitude of technologies — technologies and trends that we continue to see being developed and ones that could easily converge in the not-too-distant future to offer us some powerful opportunities for lifelong learning!
Consider that in won’t be very long before a learner will be able to reinvent himself/herself throughout their lifetime, for a very affordable price — while taking ala carte courses from some of the best professors, trainers, leaders, and experts throughout the world, all from the comfort of their living room. (Not to mention tapping into streams of content that will be available on such platforms.)
So when I noticed that Lynda.com now has a Roku channel for the big screen, it got my attention.
Lets add a few more pieces to the puzzle, given that some other relevant trends are developing quite nicely:
Anyway, these next few years will be packed with change — the pace of which will likely take us by surprise. We need to keep our eyes upward and outward — peering into the horizons rather than looking downwards — doing so should reduce the chance of us getting broadsided!
*It’s also possible that AR and VR will create
a future whereby we only need 1 “screen”
Addendum:
After I wrote/published the item above…it was interesting to then see the item below:
IBM opens Watson IoT Global Headquarters, extends power of cognitive computing to a connected world — from finance.yahoo.com
1000 Munich-based experts to drive IoT and industry 4.0 innovation
Launches eight new IoT client experience centers worldwide
Introduces Watson API Services for IoT on the IBM Cloud
Excerpt:
MUNICH, Dec. 15, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the opening of its global headquarters for Watson Internet of Things (IoT), launching a series of new offerings, capabilities and ecosystem partners designed to extend the power of cognitive computing to the billions of connected devices, sensors and systems that comprise the IoT. These new offerings will be available through the IBM Watson IoT Cloud, the company’s global platform for IoT business and developers.
Top app predictions of 2016: From tvOS and Google Now on Tap, apps are eating the web — from blog.appannie.com
Excerpt:
Every company that has an app is a publisher and apps are the new normal to deliver content, entertainment, utility, productivity, commerce, transportation, etc. 2016 promises to be another exciting year of developments and launches. Our analysts predict the top 10 app trends to watch for in 2016:
tvOS: Set to unlock the smartphone as a powerful second screen device
7 unexpected virtual reality use cases — from techcrunch.com by Andrew Thomson
Excerpt:
How VR will be used, and the changes that the technology will make to the day-to-day lives of regular people is still a matter of speculation. Gamers are warming up their trigger fingers for a new level of immersive gaming, and the field of entertainment will be transformed by the changes. But use cases in other industries could be just as transformative.
Indeed, some amazing and inventive new ways to use VR technology are already appearing that could dramatically impact people in their daily lives.
Also see:
Also see:
Also see:
Excerpt:
“VR is an individual experience. We’re looking at less obvious VR applications.”
One of these is education. To which end, Mr Hirsch took me into another room to watch a two-minute educational VR video Zypre have made with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, along with some of the Avatar team, using AMD’s technology. It depicts the Wright brothers’ 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
The film took six months to make, with computer-generated photorealistic visuals and every detail overseen by historians. I watched it on a prototype of the much-heralded Oculus Rift VR headset, expected out early next year.
It was several times more startling than the VR footage I described in April. It was more than virtual reality; it was pretty much . . . reality.
It’s not enough to say that, standing in a stuffy, darkened room in LA, I truly felt I was on a beach in North Carolina in 1903.
It was way more vivid than that. I even thought I felt the sea breeze in my face, then the backdraught from the propeller of the brothers’ flying machine. I shouted out that I could feel the wind and the techies surrounding me laughed. Apparently, a lot of people say that. It seems the brain is so fooled that it extrapolates and adds effects it thinks should be there. I have to confess, my American history is so sketchy I didn’t even know the flight was on a beach.
Also see:
See more information re:the
Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition.
How Microsoft’s HoloLens may change everything for industrial & mechanical designers — from fastcompany.com by Daniel Terdiman
By integrating Microsoft’s “mixed reality” system and Autodesk’s Fusion 360 design software, designers can see 3-D holograms of their work.
Excerpt:
Soon, product designers will be able to get up close and personal with their creations while they’re still planning them. Rather than just look at digital models on their computer screens, they could walk around a 3-D hologram of the design.
Colleges begin to take virtual reality seriously — from ecampusnews.com by Abi Mandelbaum
Excerpt:
Looking to the future, as adoption of VR increases among universities, the technology will be used in more innovative ways.
Currently, universities offer options for distance learners to take online classes; soon, colleges will use VR technology to fully immerse students in the college experience, allowing them to feel present in a classroom discussion or lecture, regardless of distance. Universities can either record these experiences for later use, or use live-streaming virtual reality—a technology that has only recently begun to catch on with major brands and institutions.
The combination of all this technology could result in something like a virtual Rhodes Scholar program, where students can take part in live classes with top professors at universities all over the world, without having to leave their regular school.
The technology will also offer an invaluable means of learning for those in the social sciences and medical fields, which often require “hands-on” experiences. Eventually, VR technology will allow students to be placed in the shoes of patients to give them insight into how they experience the world. Organizations like the Virtual Human Interaction Lab are already studying the psychological effects of VR as related to empathy. This could allow future public policy students to experience first-hand what it means to be a refugee in a third-world country, or optometry students to experience what life is like for the vision-impaired.
Outside of lectures and hands-on learning, VR also offers schools the chance to immerse students in important cultural events. Educators are already using video to enhance lessons; in the near future, VR will be used in a similar manner.
Museum collections enter VR with the launch of the Woofbert VR App for Samsung gear — from techcrunch.com by Jonathan Shieber
The museum and gallery world is getting is getting one of its first doorways into virtual reality with the launch of the new WoofbertVR app, (launched on 11/17/15) on Samsung Gear VR powered by Oculus.
Excerpt:
The company has an amazing app which will soon be able to take users on a tour of several marquee museums with some of the best collections of art and artifacts in the world.
For its first offering, the company is offering users who download the app a free view into one of the most famous rooms in the Courtauld Gallery, a gallery housing one of London’s most famous art collections.
The gallery, on a bend North of the Thames near the Waterloo Bridge, holds a treasure trove of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces including works by Gauguin, Renoir, Manet, and Monet.
Through the first offering on the app, users get a voice guided tour of the room’s paintings narrated by the author Neil Gaiman (a Woofbert investor).
