We live in pretty exciting times. Ever seen Spike Jonze’s Her? That was a little over three years ago. It feels a bit scary to think how spot on it was about the future (hopefully not the part about the heartache); it’s even scarier knowing how short of a hop it was to get from speculation to reality. I mean, have you taken a look around lately?
Speculative fiction has had a pretty decent track record with foreshadowing future technology whether they were borne out of educated hypotheses or products of fancy that inspired generations of engineers and scientists to materialize sci-fi imagery from their childhood.
And while we are a long way away from the all-knowing, sentient operating systems of that terribly depressing film, Spike Jonze’s imagined near-future was able to encapsulate the confluence of innovations from AI to AR to VR that is driving technology of the future, at the heart of which is the beloved smartphone.
Phones are getting more and more powerful. For example, ASUS revealed the ZenFone AR at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas which runs on the brand spanking new Snapdragon 821 processor with a whopping 8 GB of RAM. Most office computers do not even possess memory half that size.
While pocketing a device that strong may seem absurd at the moment, this will be the new trend for smartphones from here on out, and for good reason.
In the future, present-day new tech will start to converge, in one way or another, syncing with your smartphone which will ultimately demand more computing power. ASUS says the ZenFone AR will have Google’s Tango augmented reality (AR) and Daydream virtual reality (VR) platforms built in, justifying the RAM capacity.
New Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) innovations also made a big impression on CES-goers like smart appliances (there was even an IoT toothbrush) and AI personal assistants like Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa.
Why is this important? If the trends are anything to go by, engineers and developers are racing towards combining AI, AR, VR, and IoT to create a fully immersive digital experience. When this technological convergence becomes fully realized, the world will be changed forever.
The digital layer of the physical world will become more tangible, allowing us to interact with our environment in new ways, further increasing productivity and minimizing effort. The smartphone will be the key with which people could access all of this from turning on the TV with a remote app to browsing through furniture projecting AR images of them in living room corners they would look best in, perhaps using Microsoft’s holographic platform.
To help reach this seamless and immersive experience, tech giants and third-party partners are creating additional hardware and peripherals that aim to make the whole thing feel natural and more convenient. Sony developed the Xperia Ear, fully wireless earbuds with a built-in AI personal assistant, while Motorola released the more Jonze-esque VerveOnes that does not have a personal assistant, but has many practical features like audio pass through and weatherproofing. The mission here is to make the system of phone, smart devices and accessories feel more organic and less like carrying added baggage.
And perhaps this is why in the past couple of years the world has seen wild and admittedly very imaginative devices that changed the general public’s perception of what can be done with a phone and what should be put into it. For the most part, consumers have embraced them such as the fingerprint scanner, multiple camera systems, and even built-in projectors.
It should not be forgotten that invention has an ingredient of trial and error: letting people try out revolutionary, or, if it all goes south, eccentric ideas that can either change the world or be remembered as that thing that happened one time and should never be repeated.
However, while the prospect of controlling your house through your very own JARVIS or running through an AR exercise course that you’ve devised a la Batman are very exciting, one should take note of the risks involved. Being more connected means an increase in the number of ways security threats can strike.
Leaving the smartphone game as an in-house designer and manufacturer, Blackberry’s executives have expressed their intent to focus on developing security solutions for increasing mobile connectivity by way of the IoT. Security giants like Symantec and invested companies like IBM and Google are also investing in keeping interconnected devices as secure as possible.
The mobile phone sure has come a long way from the very expensive hunk of metal and plastic that could do one thing decades ago to the very expensive hunk of metal and plastic that could do everything today. While we are far away from the future mentioned, this period of growing pains is still a pretty fun era to be in; although perhaps try not to fall in love with Alexa 2.0.
Also published in GADGETS MAGAZINE February 2017 Issue
Words by Robby Vaflor