▶Book Description
What is Spatial Computing and why is everyone from Tesla, Apple, and Facebook investing heavily in it?
In The Infinite Retina, authors Irena Cronin and Robert Scoble attempt to answer that question by helping you understand where Spatial Computing - an augmented reality where humans and machines can interact in a physical space - came from, where it's going, and why it's so fundamentally different from the computers or mobile phones that came before.
They present seven visions of the future and the industry verticals in which Spatial Computing has the most influence - Transportation; Technology, Media, and Telecommunications; Manufacturing; Retail; Healthcare; Finance; and Education.
The book also shares insights about the past, present, and future from leading experts an other industry veterans and innovators, including Sebastian Thrun, Ken Bretschneider, and Hugo Swart. They dive into what they think will happen in Spatial Computing in the near and medium term, and also explore what it could mean for humanity in the long term.
The Infinite Retina then leaves it up to you to decide whether Spatial Computing is truly where the future of technology is heading or whether it's just an exciting, but passing, phase.
▶What You Will Learn
- Look back at historical paradigms that changed the face of technology
- Consider how Spatial Computing could be the new technology that changes our lives
- See how Virtual and Augmented Reality will change the way we do healthcare
- Learn how Spatial Computing technology will lead to fully automated transportation
- Think about how Spatial Computing will change the manufacturing industry
- Explore how finance and retail are going to be impacted through Spatial Computing devices
- Hear accounts from industry experts on what they expect Spatial Computing to bring to their sectors
▶Key Features
- Discover how Spatial Computing is changing the face of technology
- Get a roadmap for the disruptions caused by Spatial Computing and how it will affect seven major industries
- Gain insights about the past, present, and future of technology from the world's leading experts and innovators
▶Who This Book Is For
The Infinite Retina is for anyone interested in the future of technology and how Augmented Reality and Spatial Computing (among other developments) will affect both businesses and the individual.
▶Exploring Technological Change
Spatial Computing's technological change is laid out in Chapter 1, Prime Directive. Mobile phones soon will give way to headsets and glasses that bring computing to every surface. What is driving all of this new technology? We have a need for complex technologies to keep us around on this planet longer and in a more satisfied and productive state. What will drive us to build or buy new headsets, sensors, and vehicles, along with the connected systems controlled by Artificial Intelligence? Augmentation is coming, and that can mean a lot of different things, which we will explore.
We look back in Chapter 2, Four Paradigms and Six Technologies, at the previous three foundations of personal computing and include the new Spatial Computing paradigm. The six technologies discussed are those that enable Spatial Computing to work: Optics and Displays, Wireless and Communications, Control Mechanisms (Voice and Hands), Sensors and Mapping, Compute Architectures (new kinds of Cloud Computing, for instance), and Artificial Intelligence (Decision Systems).
It all started with the personal computer of the late 1970s. That paradigm shift was followed by graphical user interfaces and networking in the 1980s and the mobile phone and other devices that started arriving in the 1990s, culminating with the iPhone in 2007. Then, we look forward to the next paradigm and why it will be so different and why so many more people will be able to get more out of Spatial Computing than the laptops, desktops, and smartphones that came before.
Human/machine interfaces are radically changing, and we visit the labs that brought us the mouse to understand the differences between how humans interfaced with computers with keyboard and mice to how we'll interface with cloud computing that is hyper-connected by using voice, eyes, hands, and other methods, including even wearing suits with sensors all along our bodies. It's amazing to see how far we've come from the Apple II days, where there were very few graphics, to Spatial Computing where cameras see the real world, decipher it, and decide how to drive a car around in it.
