Stage six of the technology integration of man will be a combination of a concept called Augmented Reality, and the Brain Computer Interface. In these steps, we will bring the power of software and the Internet to a new level of integration into how we see the world, and how we work with technology. Both of these are currently in development and have working models so I am not guessing as to whether these will become an important piece of our lives – I know they will be game changers. Let’s look at them one at a time, then together…

Augmented Reality combines some of the work that has already been done by Google, Navteq and many others., with the data that is available on the Internet about almost everything. These companies have mapped streets, and even the street views, as you look down the streets. What Augmented reality does is add a component where a device that is worn in front of your eyes, or the screen on your iPhone, is pointed towards a subject and the device will recognize the subject and bring in added clouds of information around what you are looking at. So you could be looking down a street and clouds of information would pop up beside the restaurants, the retail stores, the museums, or anything else that happens to be down that street. You could ask for an overlay map and a virtual street map would overlay on your field of vision. You could look at a person and ask the system to do a facial match with their social network profiles and find out who they are.. The list is endless. Basically Augmented Reality is just what the name suggests. It is a computer augmenting what you are looking at automatically, or by request. It is interesting to think about how this might improve surgery, quality control jobs, networking at social events or education. Let’s add the second piece of this stage.

The Brain Computer Interface is a device that connect to your head and uses sensors to read the electrical patterns of our brain. It can be trained to allow you to control a computer just by thinking. A company named Emotiv is preparing to offer a commercial version of a BCI to the public. One of the first uses they see will be the game community since they will quickly adopt the concept as a big improvement over using joysticks and manual devices to control avatars on the screen. Imagine being able to work at the speed of thought! Although many people will think this is science fiction, I urge you to do a search on brain computer interface and look at all of the article written, and check out some of the interesting videos available. The reality is we have already learned how to make the concept work. All we have to do now is improve it, and shorten the training time. I for one will relish not touching a keyboard anymore. Although I fear for what I would do on long highway drives if all I had to do was think in order to control my computer!

So mix these two concepts together and you get a very interesting ability to access the Internet with just a thought, and to have the results play on a pair of goggles, a visor, and soon your actual retina. You could look at a stranger, and just think that you want to run a search and in front of your eyes, you will have their background. If you get lost, you will just be able to think about needing directions and a map will overlay in front of what you are looking at. Access to anything available on the Internet at the speed of thought. So at this point, it does start sounding like science fiction, but for anyone that reads a lot of cyberpunk, you will know that a high percentage of things described come to be. The important thing I want you to know is that it is very likely that in your career, you will be faced with using the technology described above, or at least managing people that will use it.

Scott Klososky
scott@klososky.com