I’ve long maintained that it would be Augmented Reality, not Virtual Reality, that would capture the hearts and minds of the general public as people would naturally prefer the idea of seeing useful information overlaid onto the real world instead of being entirely transported into a standalone virtual world. The logistics made more sense too. Instead of being tethered to a bulky headset or requiring the use of special gadgets, AR would likely be powered by smartphones, something all of us already have.
But now comes an exciting new approach from a company that just came out of stealth mode: Augmented Reality contact lenses, so advanced, they appear to give us superpowers.
Mark Sullivan at Fast Company explains:
“When I looked into the user interface of Mojo Vision’s augmented reality contact lenses, I didn’t see anything at first except the real world in front of me. Only when I peeked over toward the periphery did a small yellow weather icon appear. When I examined it more closely, I could see the local temperature, the current weather, and some forecast information. I looked over to the 9 o’clock position and saw a traffic icon that gave way to a frontal graphic showing potential driving routes on a simple map. At 12 o’clock, I found my calendar and to-do information. At the bottom of my view was a simple music controller.
Rather than wearing Mojo’s contact lenses—which aren’t yet ready to demo—I was looking at a mock-up of a future, consumer version of their interface through a VR headset. But the point was made. Instead of offering the pretty holograms of the Magic Leap and HoloLens headsets, Mojo aims to place useful data and imagery over your world—and boost your natural vision—using tech that can barely be seen. The startup named the lenses ‘Mojo’ because it wants to build something that’s like getting superpowers for your eyes.”
The superpower part comes from the idea that these lenses will do more than just add useful information to our field of views. They’ll fix and even enhance our vision entirely. According to Fast Company, “The Mojo lenses, for example, can detect the text on a road sign in the distance and display it clearly. They can magnify objects or project them onto the part of the person’s retina that can still see well. The lenses can help people detect objects in front of them by increasing the contrast between the shades or colors of the objects. The lenses can also superimpose graphic lines over the hard-to-see edges of objects within the wearer’s view.”
But it’s worth noting that AR is still going to be the driving force behind Mojo’s mass appeal. Just think about all of the potential use-cases, from military personnel seeing up to date battlefield information to party guests being able to put names to faces on the fly. Adds Fast Company, “if you’re leaving the airport—perhaps with your hands full of luggage—the lenses might display arrows pointing the way to your car in the parking lot. They might put a pointer over your Uber ride as it arrives, and display the license plate number and other information. If someone rings your doorbell at home, the lenses might display a video of the person standing on the porch.”
In a way, it’s almost like putting the entire Internet inside your vision. Instead of having to take out your phone or tablet to look up information, everything you need will now be accessible via a quick glance. It’s a paradigm shifting technology. Something that could be more transformative than mobile phones ever were.
And considering Mojo’s AI and AR infused capabilities it’s possible that the technology could scale all the way up to a Black Mirroresque level where these lenses capture and record everything we look at – people, products, places – at first to better serve us relevant information and targeted ads – but then to possibly keep tabs on what we’re doing, where we’re going, who we’re interacting with, and what we’re looking at.
So, while on the one hand it may be the best of both worlds (the real and the virtual) it may on the other hand be more of a curse than a blessing because like any useful technology, it could ultimately be used for good or bad, for altruistic or nefarious purposes.
It’s going to be up to us, the end user, to determine what we’re comfortable with and how far the technology goes. But either way, it’s clear that AR is here to stay and that we’re all about to get our Mojo back.
Is Mojo the Greatest Idea Ever?
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