Just another one of those typical posts attempting to predict the future trends in tech for 2020. Now that we are nearing the first hump of the year, let’s look at what’s install for new relevant tech and what’s really going to have an impact this year.
Well.. 2020 hasn’t kicked off to the best start. My social news feeds are overwhelmed by climate, social and political crises, frankly that doesn’t really get me out of bed to talk about “fun new tech”. I truly hope that tech aiding sustainability for our planet and helping humans to make direct positive change is the principle theme for 2020 across all sectors. We are the frog in the pot and we are running out of time.
But that aside (for now) I’ve consulted the crystal ball and had a number of enthralling conversations with our suppliers, the below is a lense on tech trends relevant for our GLAM sector. Purposefully avoiding insights around smart cities, blockchain, cryptocurrency.. although Etherium is sitting around $413 (up from $200 a month ago), a reminder that this was upwards of $1900 in 2018.. for those that give a shit.
The footholds and foundations for AR/VR/MR are still in play but creating these experiences and presenting them at a reasonable cost that actually creates value for the visitor is still an uphill battle with no arms. There are a lot of dead pieces of kit in the cemetery to get to where we are now, it’s closer for sure and I say this as we have just launched a new Antarctica VR experience. Which is getting great buy in from visitors as a ticketed offering.
The Dead (RIP)
Magic Leap
What’s the opposite of ‘under promising, over delivering’? After so much buzz, the amazing case studies, so many awesome partnerships. Unfortunately, I’m afraid we have to let this one go. Both from a hardware and content creation aspect the Magic Leap as proved itself to be nothing more than a novel piece of tech. It’s clunky to wear and the actual quality of the content is far different from how it’s dressed up on the website. It will be a slow death and through various alignments may find its success in the commercial sector. For public experiences however our eyes are firmly on Apple’s AR headset. This year, we should be considering now how we might art direct and scaffold content being used in this medium.
Apple has the consumer ecosystem and the platform to really push this product and more importantly integrate the ‘daily use’ factor into people's lives. If you look at the history of smartwatches and where Apple came into the market, it’s fascinating how they buy their time and learn from others failures before launching. And.. there will be others.. check out Nreal.
Leap motion
It’s been fun, see you later. We had a workshop late last year where the Leap Motion reared its ugly head as an idea. I loved the low cost and open platform, the ease of use and setup but there’s just better stuff out there. Now sold to UltraHaptics (UltraLeap) we’ll see what they might do with it this year. Whilst that’s going on most major VR headsets are getting inbuilt hand tracking such as the Oculus Quest update. So the need for a seperate sensor unit is probably going to be quite redundant in the near future.
What We Are Excited About
Projection Mapping and the passive augmentation of reality without devices. The quality of projectors matched with the quality of 4K content is something not to dismiss. We are underway with some some incredible wow moments that is taking projection based tech to a pretty awesome level. The passive nature means an easy entry point for our visitors, without the awkward tech getting in between that a lot of VR/AR/MR solutions currently have on offer. The ease of entry is two-fold from a content creation aspect, I hope to see a lot more indoor/outdoor installations embracing this to truly inspire the masses and break humans out of a negative tech adoption cycle.
Final point and food for thought for my Auckland friends and colleagues struggling to get a foothold on the housing market (like myself).
Auckland has about 1,800km of coastline. Estuaries, harbours and small inlets make up two thirds of the region’s coastline. about 11,117km2 of sea (about 69 per cent of the region).
Solving Aucklands housing crisis. https://www.springwise.com/sustainability-innovation/house-boat-helps-survive-rising-sea-level-crisis
Cheers for reading this far.
Guy.
