One day, not too soon “” but still sooner than you think “” the smartphone will all but vanish, like beepers and fax machines before it.
Make no mistake, we”re still probably at least a decade away from any kind of meaningful shift away from the smartphone. (And if we”re all cyborgs by 2027, I”ll happily eat my words. Assuming we”re still eating at all, I guess.)
Yet, piece by piece, the groundwork for the eventual demise of the smartphone is being laid by Elon Musk, by Microsoft, by Facebook, by Amazon, and a countless number of startups that still have a part to play.
And, let me tell you: If and when the smartphone does die, that”s when things are going to get really weird for everybody. Not just in terms of individual products, but in terms of how we actually live our everyday lives and maybe our humanity itself.
Here”s a brief look at the slow, ceaseless march towards the death of the smartphone “” and what the post-smartphone world is shaping up to look like.
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Microsoft, Facebook, Google and the Google-backed Magic Leap are all working to build standalone augmented reality headsets, which project detailed 3D images straight into your eyes. Even Apple is rumoured to be working on this, too.
Microsoft”s Alex Kipman recently told Business Insider that augmented reality could flat-out replace the smartphone, the TV, and anything else with a screen. There”s not much use for a separate device sitting in your pocket or on your entertainment center, if all your calls, chats, movies, and games are beamed into your eyes and overlaid on the world around you.
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This week, we got our first look at Neuralink, a new company cofounded by Elon Musk with a goal of building computers into our brains by way of “neural lace,” a very early-stage technology that lays on your brain and bridges it to a computer. It”s the next step beyond even that blending of the digital and physical worlds, as man and machine become one. SNIP
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