I remember the context!
We were talking about reasons not to give up on trying to save the world (and the viability of the co-opernation-within-a-corporation approach and the fact that nothing similar has been given a chance) and somebody mentioned the fact that technology offered no solutions.
When working on the co-opernation we wanted to give chances at excellent lives to everyone, not just westerners. Somebody pointed out during the process that there’s a problem with bringing everyone in the third world up to a high standard of living, that being the impact to the environment.
So the mission was to come up with at least one solution to that problem, because neglecting humans was not an option. That solution was the Wearable Holodeck.
The reason why I for one am excited by this is because
- It requires no new technologies, just minor enhancements of existing ones.
and - Fully implemented, it greatly reduces the need for the vast majority of the populace for low-quality mass produced crap. It helps us save the environment without asking us to do things that most of us never do.
Basically, why buy a bunch of board games when you and some friends can have all the pieces materialize at a whim? Why buy a new video game system with a big screen TV when you can completely immerse yourself in the environment and have whatever controls are needed appear at your fingertips and have them disappear when you’re done?
We’re getting in front of that economic decision making point. Sure, people might want their own special toys (and that’s totally cool), but when so many things can be fully simulated virtually we nudge people into choosing things that can’t when spending resources…comfort, health, etc.
On top of that it had benefits there too, for example using the existing technologies mentioned within to enable a surgeon to perform surgery more precisely and accurately (with guides and assistance) than a mere human ever could alone. There are hordes of other productivity improvements, honestly I can barely grasp them all.
I was using eSight as an example of comfortable-ish wearable tech, but I actually like EyeTap now that we’re seeing it! We’d want a variant that covers both eyes for immersion of course, but that’s pretty spiffy! So huge thanks there, sir!
