What Technology Will Be Bigger Than the Internet

The mobile app industry has come and gone, especially social apps when it comes to new market penetration. SnapChat amongst a very few others have claimed top spots in the tech/consumer landscape. As someone who's built a social app, I've been approached by other individuals to join their social app endeavors but I politely decline their offers. So where do we go from here?

Here is a top 5 list of where the technology industry will be fertile for future investments:

1. Augmented Reality (aka Mixed Reality)

Today, the battle is between Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality when it comes to consumer adaptation, just like the battles between VHS vs Betamax and HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray. One winner will come out swinging taking the 1st podium at the winner circle. I've been a very avid supporter of Virtual Reality as Facebook owned Oculus Rift has created what I've been looking forward too since I was a young kid with a Nintendo Virtual boy. The only challenge with Virtual Reality is that with a $600-800 price tag in its current stage you also need to make a personal computer to boot with the juice to provide more than enough video rendering power. When it comes to consumer adaptation with virtual reality, VR in the mobile form will win overall even though the user experience will be subpar.

I'm an early adopter of VR don't get me wrong but Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality will be the winner in the space. As one entertainment exec put it "Augmented Reality will be bigger than the internet" and I believe they are right. AR doesn't take people out of their environment rather it enhances their surroundings with visualized data. And even though the current form factor with the Microsoft HoloLens is at its best - we will get to a point where the form factor will be like any normal glasses you'd find at the Optometrist. Google came out with the Google Glass which was a great product with a bad introduction to the public. They tried to make it too expensive and exclusive, so they essentially created the "glass-hole" culture around a product that could have had mass adaptation (thanks Scobble).

2. Internet of Things (IoT)

Although, IoT has been around for the past few years - we are starting to see the fruits of its initial offsprings come out into the consumer world. With products like Amazon's Echo and the new Google Home, consumers will be able to have that smart home experience that was dreamed about since the days of the Jetsons. This feels like the beginning days of us turning the Terminator movie's Skynet into a reality. As we start to see Google Home and Amazon Echo take more place within the consumer market, we will begin to realize a more standardize smart-technology language when it comes to product-to-product communication.

3. Bots

Are we tired of jumping on phone calls to companies to only be speaking with automated systems that truly don't understand what we are asking for. With Facebook Messenger including Bots into their service, we will be able to forego the mobile phone calls to companies only to be stuck in a queue. This will also lead to the the future where telecom companies will no longer be using phone numbers as they will be obsolete. We will be getting in touch with each other just based on names / identities rather than a number. Imagine, going to a theme park like Disneyland and jumping on Facebook messenger to figure out queue times or where to find those delicious corn dogs in DCA.

4. Artificial Intelligence

Jumping off the Bots train, we will see artificial intelligence starting to take shape with blue-chip companies like Facebook and IBM developing the infrastructure around it. Artificial intelligence will be used both in smart home technology and in the future to help educate the children of the world. What is happening is that we will see more robots with artificial intelligence being used to reduce the workforce industry as we see more companies like Foxconn replace it's human workers for robots.

As more people complain about $15 dollar minimum wages gap at fast-food joints, those jobs will also be replaced by artificial intelligent robots which corporations wouldn't need to pay medical insurance or a minimum wage. We will see these operations staffed by maybe 1-2 human beings 10% of the workforce to 90% of the remain workforce staffed by AI robots.

5. Sports Technology

One of the last major industries to be disrupted by technology, sports entertainment is starting to see big players like the LA Dodgers and Philly 76ers open up their brands to the technology sector with startup accelerators. We've seen companies like Twitch develop a world for eSports live-video broadcasting and Microsoft HoloLens projecting a mixed reality layer over sporting events.

Chris Kluwe, a former NFL punter for the Vikings, said that augmented reality can be installed into NFL player's helmets within the next two to three years.

"As cell phones migrate to visual sensor, like Google Glass, you can interpret the information and make it useful," Kluwe said. "Clear plastic visors can be installed into football helmets. Plays will pop up right in front of the players and they will already know what they have to do. Now they just need to react."

Other sectors within the sports technology world that we will see disruption is within the fan engagement, data-analytics tracking athletic vitals, and the introduction to new sport verticals which I like to called Future Sports - which are technology-based competitions such as eSports and Drone Racing.

We are starting to see traditional sports athletes start to get involved in the tech landscape with sport owners buying out eSports organizations - in addition big sporting named like Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryant and Steph Curry getting involved in the investment game as they start to diversify their nest egg portfolios.

These top 5 themes will drive the new investment landscape and start to bring new forms of life-science experiences into the consumer market. I will continue to watch out as these themes start to reach mainstream adaptation and follow up in a future post.

In conclusion...

We are realizing a future in which our cultures will start to shift into service-based industries and the workforce-based industry will keep on shrinking as we implement technology, artificial intelligence and robotics to replace the human workforce. It's true that human-to-human interaction is still a top basic need but as corporations start to realize that less-humans in the workforce will mean more revenue and less expenditures, be ready to find new jobs that can't be filled by these artificial intelligent robots. I leave you with this tidbit:

The top 10 future jobs in the world that will exist in the next 3-5 years are non-existent today.

What Technology Will Be Bigger Than the Internet

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/augmented-reality-bigger-than-internet-other-top-4-future-english

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