One feels that we stand on the edge of colossal changes in the way we interact with the world.
Advances in AI are changing the idea of “search” from a hunt for sources that can provide the answer to our question, to a bot that simply tells us the answer. Will that change be an improvement, or just another way in which we get “information” from a black box without knowing the biases or conflicts or commercial pressures that influenced the programming of the algorithm that provided the answer?
At the same time that way we source information about the world is changing, changes to the way we perceive the world are also dead ahead. The promise that Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality devices would reach mainstream culture and enhance daily life has been around for more than twenty years, but now seem on the lip of actually coming true. Apple and Meta, among other big players in the space, are bringing new, affordable and intuitive headsets that will offer different ways to perceive “reality.”
All we will need to do is choose.