Beginning

In this chapter, we have thrown a light on just a portion of the stories of innovators and the innovations that they are bringing to market, all of which we will all use by 2030, or most likely by 2025. We've given you an initial indication of how versatile and useful Spatial Computing is―for use by farmers to fly fisherman to businesspeople that use data analyses, to people who ride in Teslas and soon, autonomous vehicles. Technologies such as Machine Learning and 5G will further strengthen the reach of Spatial Computing.

We've been telling people we are just at the beginning of a new 50-year product cycle, which brings a new kind of personal computing that many have said will lead into the Singularity―a deep merging of humans with machines. Already in R&D labs, researchers are showing a new kind of computing coming where you will just "think" of doing something, like sending a message to a loved one, and a message will appear in mid-air and you'll send it just by thinking "send."

The road to Spatial Computing has been a very long one―one that humans have been on ever since they started making tools that could substantially improve their chances of survival and their quality of life. Where we stand now is in an iterative stage that will yield significant gains. It is as if we are back in 1976 and Wozniak and Jobs just showed us the prototypes of the Apple II. We are still seeing improvements to personal computers 40 years later; however, this new type of computing will be a major leap.

It appears that the closer a created Spatial Computing experience is to real life, the more satisfaction a viewer has from it―both from practical and entertainment perspectives. The utility makes sense given the tool nature of Spatial Computing. In which way and how far humans will take Spatial Computing is very much the reason for this book. We are approaching it from an enterprise perspective, focusing on the particulars of industry vertical use, although our discussion of particular technologies will make it clear that there is a massive potential for wide consumer use of Spatial Computing.

For the rest of this book, we will detail and discuss what we think will happen in Spatial Computing within the next five years, give some major indications of what could happen in 10, talk about what it could mean for humanity in 25 years―focusing on culture and society―and give some far-reaching comments on what we might see in 50 years' time. We will look at seven industries that are about to undergo massive changes and radical disruptions and to understand why, we'll dive into the technology driving this perfect storm of change and take a look at some of the changes coming to each of them.