On August 14, 2019, Cathy Hackl led a pre-VRX2019 webinar on the current state of XR in our culture.
Integrating Media with Reality.
An interesting thread in the conversation was, integration of media with everyday life. Right now when we ingest media from our devices we do so via screens, buttons, and mice. “People” like Siri and Alexa who take voice commands, have started to reduce those hardware barriers. We are evolving toward an almost biological relationship with data.
Not a Door to Another Reality.
It’s tempting to create alternative realities in XR; certainly in VR. We have the ability to “replace reality with media”. It can be a great escape, a great learning experience, or a wonderful adventure. Those “false” realities have tremendous value.
Augmented Reality is Entirely Different.
AR (or XR) has the potential to integrate with our waking consciousness, supplementing or enhancing our experience. But downloading apps, and donning bulky apparatus, have been obstacles in that process. Just as voice commands have reduced friction between humans and their devices, visual search, and gaze-based navigation, which make headsets feel so natural, will facilitate serving data on demand.
Good content filtering will also help. A minimalist approach is preferable to information overload. Since our brains can only process so much, serving only the most relevant data points will provide the best experience.
As we clear away the clutter and the media evolves, life and tech will become seamless. “Reality” will defy the laws of physics and free us from the boundaries of the material world.
As part of the Enterprise/Channel GTM team, Cathy Hackl helps drive Magic Leap‘s enterprise go-to-market strategy as they engage and provide spatial computing solutions for Manufacturing, AEC, Automotive, Education, and Healthcare.
The panel members were: