Computers are perhaps one of the most significant inventions of humanity which have literally changed the way our whole civilisation functions. I don’t think there is any area that is untouched by computers.
In the beginning, computers were as large as buildings and now thanks to the exponential progress in computing technology (like miniaturisation for example), today, we have devices in our palms that are millions of times faster than those computers.
And the most interesting thing is that computers keep evolving and take various shapes and forms with different functionality to serve our various needs. We have laptops, smartphones, tablets, smartwatches and soon, smart glasses.
Yes, there is an entirely new category of computing that is being developed - one that could replace everything else in the coming times. Coupled with augmented reality, smart glasses could be the one device category we need.
Right now, we are pretty much used to two type of interfaces for our computing. One type of interface is the one we have on our desktops and laptops where we use a keyboard and a mouse.
The second type is the one that we have on our smartphones and tablets which are simpler but we can interact with the virtual elements more with our touch. Augmented reality is a revolutionary computer interface, that puts these virtual elements into the real world, so that both feel like sharing a common reality.
Right now, we are only beginning to get a taste for augmented reality via our smartphones and dedicated devices like Microsoft’s Hololens and Oculus Rift, but in the future, even these will get simplified to their most minimal form i.e. the form of spectacle glasses or in the more distant future, in smart contact lenses.
This is exactly like in the movies where people get all the information they want right in the eye wear and in their field of vision such that they can also interact with that information. These devices would of course be connected to the internet so you could get all the information you want.
Not only will this simplify our digital life quite a bit by potentially replacing other bulky devices, it will also provide interactive computing needs/experiences anywhere you can imagine, especially on the go.
You wouldn’t even need to look down on your smartphone all the time to do that, as every info will be right there. Augmented reality has tons of benefits as a computing interface as we can fully immerse in the virtual elements which can interact with the real world. This. Is. Huge!
Now the challenges. One of the immediate challenges I see is local storage. We are habituated to store terabytes of data in our computers and for smart glasses to replace computers totally, they would be needed to be able to store all that data in a very, very tiny space. This is relatively easy however given the recent advancements in this field.
The second challenge would be computing power, which could be taken care pretty easily, given how powerful mobile chips are getting these days. In the future, this will only keep increasing, along with decrease in size. The third challenge of battery life should be pretty easy to take care as well if we nail long distance wireless charging.
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