The Future of Work Through the Lens of a Headset

Virtual Realty enables us to interact with our computers in ways we’ve never seen before, a technology that was abandoned only to be revisited decades later. Now, it has the opportunity to change everything, from the way we interact, to the way we will do work in the future.

The Father of VR

Jaron Lanier once stated that:

The future is always more complex than the present because we have to deal with multiple possible ends, each of which has all of the vagaries of the present.

How we use technology is unpredictable. Humans are passive hackers, it’s human nature to find ways to manipulate technology so it breaks out of the mold it was intended for. On this basis, to understand how VR will change computing, we need to understand where it all started.

Jaron Lanier is one of the most influential pioneers of Virtual Reality, also known as the “Father of VR”. He’s a computer scientist, composer, artist, and author. He founded VPL Research in the 1980s, one of the first companies to tackle VR as a product. Some of their products included a virtual reality headset called the EyePhone and a haptic glove called the Wired Glove.

A look at these products today is proof of the visionary thinking that led Lanier and his team at VPL.

Recently we’ve been witnessing applications for VR, but these technologies have already been invented 30 years ago.

Virtual Reality Today

The full history of virtual reality can be traced back to the 1800s, since then, there have been small leaps of innovation.

In 2012, a Kickstarter campaign was launched to develop the Oculus Rift, the rebirth of VPL’s EyePhone product. It raised $2.5 million in funding on the platform, this was the start of a new age in virtual reality.

A New Beginning

When Facebook bought Oculus Rift for $2 billion in 2014, it was a defining moment for VR and it’s future.

Around the same time Google released their Artificial Reality (AR) product the Google Glass and a year later the Gloveone was developed to revive the VPL Wired Glove from 1987.

Today we’re witnessing the early applications of virtual reality in areas other than gaming. Facebook is spearheading efforts in building a new Social Network called Social VR (2016) and last year at Oculus Connect 5 (2018) they released their first line of hardware. It took them only four years to establish a platform and deploy their first wave of products. In 2020, we are likely to see an explosion for VR adoption on an enterprise and consumer level.

While Facebook is tackling a vertical market of social, many companies are tackling others.

In the gaming industry, Valve is investing in a high-fidelity headset. Their focus is to deliver a better gaming experience through their platform, and ergonomic hardware. Their recent game Half-Life: Alyx has been a watershed moment for all gamers/creators alike.

While these are innovative, reality headsets will give us more flexibility in how we use our computers at home and in the office. It will equip users with a new interface, one that’s not constrained to a desk, a mouse, or keyboard, but in a three-dimensional space with only a headset.

This is the birth of a modern GUI.

The New GUI

While the hardware layer is in it’s infancy there are companies racing to create the Virtual User Interface (VUI). Open-source initiatives such as the work done by the Kronos Group (Known for standards such as OpenGL, WebGL, and Vulcan) have enabled the development space for Virtual Reality Headsets to flourish. OpenXR is a standard developed by the group to "simplify AR/VR software development" providing a standard that allows all hardware/software vendors along the supply chain to develop on common ground. Learn more about OpenXR.

In 1973, The first computer GUI was developed by a company called Xerox. At first, Xerox did not see the potential of a bitmap interface with drop-down menus, windows, and a cursor. This led to their demise as Apple and Microsoft took their GUI to market in 1979. The echoing technologies we see in VR will once again go through this transformation, but who will be the first to pioneer a VUI on the scale of what Apple and Microsoft did?

Gravity Sketch is a software for creatives to sketch and design in a 3D space. Industrial Design is an industry that used clay modeling to envision their product in a physical, miniature form. Virtual reality applications such as Gravity Sketch replaces the traditional process of clay modeling.

By using their software, designers are empowered to design in any three-dimensional space. Allowing designers to free themselves of physical boundaries and constraints, their work environment is their canvas.

Logitech is collaborating with HTC Vive to create hardware appliances for virtual-enabled accessories. They call the system BRIDGE. It was released in 2017 and they’re only sold developer kits. Even though this concept was put on hold, the torch has been lit for others to come in and perfect it.

Recently they’ve announced the VR Stylus, a beta product that will be released later this year.

Many enterprises will benefit in digitizing their graphical interface to VR immensely. The industry of data science and analytical technology in particular, will use it to visualize data models in real-time, enabling analysts to make correlations in 3D with little overhead.

Education and visual learning is also a huge market. Compared to a classroom setting, it garners the ability to provide a customized adaptive learning experience for children. Google is pushing the Cardboard for this exact vertical.

It’s evident to see where this technology will head, but as Jaron Lanier stated before, the future has multiple possible ends, each of which has all of the vagaries of the present. As the world adopted mobile phones, many ignored the repercussions it had on privacy, health, and culture. As the new age of a virtual UI approaches, how will these technologies shape the human experience? Will it reinvent social interaction? How will work change?

Time will only tell.