Augmented Reality Will be Important for Everyone
In this post on TechCrunch, investor Court Westcott explains why Augmented Reality will be important for everyone. Westscott is excited about the potential for Augmented Reality to make information more accessible more quickly to more people. The post compares the impact of what he terms the “Law of Information Accessibility” with Moore’s Law which is commonly understood, even by those who are not involved in information technology.
Westscott, one of the investors in Metaio, which was acquired by Apple earlier in 2015, then proposes that with computer vision being added to so many new devices and services, the shift in information accessibility will profoundly change humans. It will, Westscott suggests, be analogous to when evolutionary pressure resulted in animals with sight surviving better than those without. Westscott concedes that the equivalent of a “Cambrian explosion” in human knowledge as a result of vastly improved information accessibility, will only begin when technologies converge sufficiently to deliver cost effective and highly optimized hands-free and head-worn displays.
The period which marked a burst of evolutionary change in life forms on Earth, known as the “Cambrian explosion,” lasted about 53 million years. Fortunately, technology (including Moore’s law) is advancing quickly. And, although no one knows precisely when display devices will be suitable for sustained use by everyone for 100% information accessibility, we can assert with confidence that at least some rare and complex tasks can already be supported and improved by intermittent professional use of existing devices using computer vision and Augmented Reality.