Technology is making breakthrough beyond imagination. Our world is way more different than the world in just a hundred years back. From steam engines to levitating trains we made the commute as easy as one two and three. Flying cars are surfing on the air of United Arab Emirates while self-driving trucks in United States roads are creating tension in drivers circle.We are no more in the times of unpredictability and leaving everything to fate. We are developing reasons for every happening and we are trying to explain everything which used to create superstition in the minds of people. Touchscreen and plasma have replaced the just a decade old push button technologies which were considered the miracle of its time. We are moving forward in every direction, and we have no idea about the limits as generally we say that sky is the limit. Smartphones and high-speed internet made the social networking easier than ever. We are connected to everyone anytime. The world is truly become the global village where we can see, talk and hear to a person sitting opposite corner of the world.
2017 proved the most productive year technology wise. Top new inventions and technologies include hot solar cells, gene therapy, the complete 360-degree selfie, retina display phone unlocking, paying with the face recognition, practical quantum PCs, reversing the process of paralysis, self-driving trucks, botnets of things, reinforcement learning, and the cell atlas and many more. These discoveries have proven that human can achieve everything and technology is the next magic (“These Are the 10 Breakthrough Technologies You Need to Know about Right Now”). These advancement has paved the path for future technologies which might have the potential to alter our world practically. We also have some reservations about this steep curve of advancement in the artificial intelligence and computational machines as the risk involving in the wrong going of any logic might create a catastrophe. But let’s see where this technology will lead us as we are moving forward with full of curiosity (Urmson and Whittaker; Multiplexed Communication between Host Computer and Smartphone Used as Wireless Modem; “The Unabridged History of Social Media”; Mai).
Smartphones have become the necessity of time. Everyone has it, irrespective of age, gender, or the income. With the boom of touchscreen phone first introduced by the Apple Inc. back in 2007, the smartphones have touched the new heights of success. Smartphones replaced the old phones with buttons and also came with greater processing speed and multitasking features. But smartphone did not reveal itself; it came into existing with a thorough process of evolution. Communication was the dream of a human from the beginning of time, as a man always wanted to close the distances and get to each other faster. Bell resolved this issue and invented the phone, a one to one wired voice-based communication which needed a medium to communicate. A whole new field of telecommunication emerged, and countries created the net of wires to communicate to each other. With the passage of time, a lot of improvement carried out to make this process more sophisticated and efficient. With the invention of packet and circuit switching techniques, the overall process of switching became more productive and autonomous. After the world war two, a serious concern of privacy and data security came in front of a scientist, so countries started to define different laws and legislation about the privacy and different sentencing about the breakage of these laws. Now with the invention of new era smartphones as entertainment and connectivity became easy so does the unethical activities. We are getting into the augmented and virtual reality, and we are creating the digital replicas of ourselves. These new technologies are sometimes creating harmful effects on our body and health. Such organization like IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) have set some standards to meet in case of marketing a new technology. For example in case of virtual and segmented reality the IEE standard is “2048.5 – Standard for Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality: Environment Safety” which enforces the marketing and development of quality and health friendly virtual reality products (IEEE SA – 2048.5 – Standard for Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality: Environment Safety).
The first-ever virtual reality was created in 1931 when commercial flight simulator was patented named the link trainer. It evolved with the passage of time from the Sensorame (1955), the Telesphere mask (1960), Aspen movie map (1970), VPL Eyephone (1989), Nintendo virtual boy (1990), Virtual Gaming Machines (2000), Microsoft Kinect (2010), Oculus Rift (2012) to Microsoft Hololens (2016) (Bernazzani).
Advantages of virtual reality depend upon the field in which we are using it. Like in the aviation virtual reality plays an important role in the simulation of flights during the training of the new crew. Due to augmented reality pilots get the training more close to the real scenarios. In business, we can hold a completely augmented and virtual conference and meeting while sitting in the home. Virtual reality is now entering the realm of education and classroom. We have the virtual classrooms in which teachers and students interact virtually with each other (What Are the Benefits of Virtual Reality for Business?).
Virtual reality has some drawbacks too like this is creating more distances between the people. Virtual reality has some addictive prospect too which we should not ignore. People are spending more time in their virtual worlds than being present where they are. Mostly younger people are getting affected by this technology as they are spending more time on the virtual reality than other groups. And a middle-aged group of people with some career needs have widely benefitted from the virtual reality as this technology helped them in the business, job, and education.
References
Bernazzani, Sophia. The Evolution of Virtual Reality [Infographic]. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/the-evolution-of-virtual-reality.
IEEE SA – 2048.5 – Standard for Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality: Environment Safety. https://standards.ieee.org/develop/project/2048.5.html. Accessed 6 Feb. 2018.
Mai, Thuy. “Global Positioning System History.” NASA, 5 May 2015, http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/communications/policy/GPS_History.html.
Multiplexed Communication between Host Computer and Smartphone Used as Wireless Modem. 12 May 2006, https://patents.google.com/patent/US8082363B2/en.
“The Unabridged History of Social Media.” Social, 10 Nov. 2015, https://blog.bufferapp.com/history-of-social-media.
“These Are the 10 Breakthrough Technologies You Need to Know about Right Now.” MIT Technology Review, https://www.technologyreview.com/lists/technologies/2017/.
Urmson, C., and W. “. Whittaker. “Self-Driving Cars and the Urban Challenge.” IEEE Intelligent Systems, vol. 23, no. 2, Mar. 2008, pp. 66–68. IEEE Xplore, doi:10.1109/MIS.2008.34.
What Are the Benefits of Virtual Reality for Business? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connect/small-business/tech/pc-world/benefits-of-virtual-reality/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2018.
