Tag: #MR #ArtificialIntelligence #VR #AR #ImmersiveTech #WomeninTech

Future of Work

I’m obsessed with all things future of work, mostly because it effects, well, everything.  With so much converging digital technology rapidly changing products, services and social mores faster than most of us, never mind government policy can keep up.  Life is changing fast; and slowly at the same time.

Humans find change unsettling or exciting, often both at the same time.  Context is important and it’s often hard to remember how young so many of the companies that consume our lives are.  Facebook is fourteen, that’s 14 years young.  Google is  19 and pulling up the rear, Amazon is  23 years old.  They are young and yet, deeply embedded in our lives.   It’s important to note, the tech that making them possible, including computational power has been decades in the making.  That would be the fast, yet slow change that tech brings.   Bottom line is these companies have changed they way we communicate, connect, work and live.  In a word: everything.

The entire world’s workforce is trending toward many, most workers by 2020 or 2025, depending on the report,  will be working on a project basis as a freelancer or contract worker.   That means all kind of change and these exciting startups below are applying all sorts of technology from #AR to #AI to this changing marketplace today.   I’ve linked to company videos that explain more.

  • PowerToFly  is says Wikipedia, “a recruiting platform that connects companies to women in tech”.  They are building a robust community of talent and a direct pipeline into companies from Dow Jones to GitLab.  They are creating a new model in human capital and solving a relentless diversity in tech problem.
  • JustWorks  the company says “is a platform that automates payroll, benefits, and compliance so entrepreneurs can focus on what matters: growing their business and their team.”  I would add, entrepreneurs and anyone working for themselves in any capacity.
  • BEAM is “a full-service, interactive marketing and experience design agency.”  They developed a mind-blowingly interesting an HR onboarding augmented reality (#AR) prototype”. It’s worth the time, check out the video.

 

 

 

 

 

Calling ALL Virtual Reality Skeptics

4th-industrial-revolution1

Photo: World Economic Forum

“I’m a skeptic,” a seasoned filmmaker, let’s call her Mary, told me not long ago standing in the middle of a VR festival.  “I’m a skeptic when it comes to virtual reality.”  No matter how many times I hear it, I am always perplexed.  I gave her my standard comeback,  “What are you skeptical about exactly?” adding, “I honestly don’t understand because we don’t know what it is yet.”   Mary makes wonderful movies and while she said the word skeptical, her eyes screamed disbeliever.   She’s convinced stories can’t be told in the waters of this evolving three dimensional technologies.

She’s not the only one, I meet lots of self-described skeptics logging miles among technologists, entrepreneurs, educators, investors, health providers, multi national corporations, creatives, governments, corporate leaders, and basically, anyone interested in the Fourth Revolution (see chart above).

Routinely, I also ask them all to hold off a minute and better yet, dig in, check out what’s being made (seeing as much of the content is being created for the first time), keep an open mind and even better think about how this might actually work in their domain of expertise.

Keep in mind, among the cyber-physical system sit emerging technologies of virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and artificial intelligence.  It’s not just one technology that is the question, it’s a number of viable technologies, like computer visualization and mobile computing power, that are driving incredible possibilities among emerging technologies.  They are huge buckets of potentially life changing tools defined by the nature of the hardware if any, software, content and application.

We live in a three dimensional world. It’s virtually impossible to think that this ability to manipulate things in and about our world in 3 dimensions will not  find relevance and scale accordingly.   Life is nothing but change and tech is innovating faster than most would have imagined even 50 years ago.  I mean,  Google’s  not even twenty years old and many of us, certainly above a certain age, cannot really recall the world before the search engine arrival.

For almost four years now there has been a yearly influx of new headsets, applications and creations into the marketplace.  New. It’s all new.  Before we dismiss virtual or augmented or mixed reality, envelope it in a choke hold of skepticism, let’s  first truly investigate how it might be relevant in your life or your work.