Spatial technologies that integrate the real world with the virtual one may actually be the glue that can hold today’s different technologies together
We are about to take a giant leap forward in the way we use the Internet.
Some people call it Web 3.0 and others call it the Spatial Web because the interface is becoming more immersive. Whatever you call it, it is a more natural and powerful way of shopping, learning, running our businesses and even our cities – and it will change our lives dramatically in the coming decade.
Immersive technologies like VR and AR are not exactly new, although they started gaining ground when startups like Magic Leap came into the scene popularizing the augmented-reality headset around 2015 after years of stealth development. Microsoft also applied some of its gaming-oriented technology into Hololens, which debuted in 2016.
But perhaps the most popular mainstream application of AR is when Niantic, Nintendo and Pokemon Corp launched Pokemon GO in mid-2016, which superimposed Pokemon onto the real-world with the help of smartphones, enabling players to track and capture these monsters in real-life locations around the globe.
Augmented reality was a good start
What augmented reality does for these powerful technologies will essentially be providing a way for users to interact with technology as if it were actually present in the real-world. Instead of finding a Pokemon, you can now find a product or repair a car. The applications are endless.
AR has potential use cases not only in gaming and high tech but also in industries like:
1. Healthtech – Can be used to improve medical diagnosis in terms of identifying patients, their history, and treatment plans and help patients to implement their health regimen.
2. Logistics and supply chains – Can be used to keep better track of goods across the supply chain and automate payments and title transfers.
4. Tourism – Can be used in identifying places of interest and providing an AR guide to show you points of interest.
As good as the opportunities are, there are also challenges involving augmented reality and related technologies, which have perhaps contributed to the relative slowdown of news in this field.
For one, there needs to be an Open Standard that can be used across different hardware and platforms, so that content providers can easily provide their resources to businesses and individuals, without prejudice to which end-user platforms they use. The World Wide Web is an open standard, not controlled by a company but by a non-profit foundation. Because of this, you can access the Web from any device. By contrast, Smartphone Apps run on either Android or iOS – which are operating systems controlled by companies.
In particular, building a fully immersive environment with rich data might take some time to build up. In an interview, Emil Chan, Startup Mentor at the Guangzhou CP-Nest Incubator of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Fintech Chairman at Hong Kong’s Smart City Consortium, shared how establishing better hardware and data standards will help pave the way for better AR utilization. “It won’t be popular until the future generation of Google Glass or similar tech has matured.
People will no longer need to use handsets to communicate that much if they can interact with the real and cyber world with just a pair of glasses and their voice.”
He adds that data security would be a big concern, especially given geopolitics: “It is very difficult to build a standard protocol given the current dynamics among the leading tech-savvy countries.”
Spatial web as the new paradigm
With this in mind, the next step to coming up with an effective framework for augmented reality involves establishing standards that can be used across industries, content, service providers, and geographies.
Toward this end, the concept of the “Spatial Web” goes beyond simply adding data overlays through augmented reality. The ideal scenario involves bringing together richer data and content through artificial intelligence, machine learning, internet-of-things, robotic sensors, and even decentralized technologies like blockchain.
“Geared with natural language search, data mining, machine learning, and AI recommendation agents, the Spatial Web is a growing expanse of services and information, navigable with the use of ever-more-sophisticated AI assistants and revolutionary new interfaces,” says Dan Mapes, Founder and President at VERSES.IO, which has developed the VERSES Smart Space technology and the new open-standard, Spatial Web protocol.
“Because of much faster chip and network speeds we can finally realize the true promise of the Web because we can now digitize, ID, and link everything else in the world — people, places and things — not just our documents,” he shares. “Every building in every city, every vehicle including all trains, planes, automobiles and scooters, every person as a sovereign citizen of the network (a “netizen”), every object in every store and on every street.”
He links it with the “smart city” concept, which is being implemented in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Taipei, in the region: “In other words, we can now make a digital copy of everything and everyone in the physical world or even in the worlds of our imagination and link everything together with a new open Spatial Web standard providing full search, analytics and commerce abilities. Only in this way can we create Smart Cities.”
As a new protocol, the Spatial Web provides an open platform for businesses to digitalize data on a three-dimensional space, with which users can interact. And just like the current Web, the Spatial Web protocol is being released by a non-profit foundation called The Spatial Web Foundation – making it free to use by anyone.
The internet of value
This brings us to the concept of Web 3.0, or the so-called “internet-of-value”. Web 1.0 was static information-based internet only, aimed at user consumption of documents. Web 2.0 entails much of how we use the internet today, such as video streaming, social media, and influencers, which mostly focuses on user-generated content and feedback mechanisms. Web 3.0 will involve a more intuitive and immersive experience, which includes artificial intelligence, semantic web, ubiquity, and three-dimensional experience.
“This digitization of life means that suddenly every piece of information can become spatial, every environment can be smarter by virtue of AI, and every data point about me and my assets—both virtual and physical—can be reliably stored, secured, enhanced, and monetized,” shares Mapes.
“The bonding between analogue and digital worlds will be bridged by Spatial Web seamlessly, and there are many examples,” says Emil Chan. “For instance, authenticating a client’s large amount of payment will be much secured if we can employ all the above-mentioned technologies. Drivers can keep their focus all the time on the windscreen as the road directions and instructions, and the objects ahead, are all displayed right in front of the screen.”
To some extent, we are already experiencing the internet-of-value, especially semantic web and AI. Whenever you search for a certain keyword or topic online, for example, online services somehow understand the context and utilize recommendation engines to present options to you — even across different applications.
It can be uncanny and unsettling that whenever you talk to someone about a certain product or topic, you get presented with related ads on your social media feed. It might sound like apps like Facebook are spying on you, but in reality, it’s the semantic web that is working.
This means that digital services are already starting to learn how to interact with humans and with each other with the aim of making it easier to provide such services. For instance, users no longer need to spend a lot of time learning how to use apps, but can instead do transactions over conversations with chatbots — as an example.
The bigger picture here goes beyond user interaction with services. We already touched on how augmented reality can be used in proptech, health tech, tourism, logistics, etc.
Now that the new protocol has been released, the Spatial Web is already making a difference in the fields of manufacturing, education, medicine, and beyond. Immersive experiences make it easy to learn concepts and to operate industrial machinery. These technologies are even assisting surgeons in making life-saving decisions today.
Spatial Web essentially means that the entire world can be “painted” with data – something like the Matrix movie.
“The power inherent in the Spatial Web comes from its ability to enable information to be contextually anchored directly in the world itself, such that we can then interact with this information in the most natural and intuitive ways; by merely looking, speaking, gesturing or even just thinking,” concludes VERSES’ Mapes.
“It adds intelligence and context to every place, object, and person that we encounter, and makes our interactions and transactions faster and more secure by decentralizing compute and storage of data in the most relevant and contextual way possible.
The Spatial Web is the web we’ve always dreamed of and it’s the one that we’ve been seeing in our science fiction films. It’s now finally becoming our next reality.
Source: e27
