Accelerating Future, Part 2.5

This is an ‘out-of-band’ post for my Accelerating Future series…  I didn’t plan on covering Virtual Reality as a significant technology for change, but the folks over at Blue Mars really surprised me with this demo:

Taken in today’s context, it might look like “just another game” or “just a nice demo” but the potential is much bigger than that.

Mobile smart phones are bringing the Internet closer to everyday activities.  GPS and RFID are bringing location awareness to everyday objects. Smaller (and cheaper) high definition sensors and displays are making our window into the digital world easier to wear and carry.  New computer human interfaces are making our interactions with software more natural. Moore’s law is bringing the raw processing power and storage needed for life-like simulations.  It’s all quite a convergence!

So virtual and augmented reality are not going to be “just a game”.  They will work with all of tomorrow’s technologies to provide an environment for modeling the real world along with all its social interactions and information.  Just about every part of our lives will be affected by this next step of the web, just like we have been changed by the web as it is today.