The 5 Second Future

You're going to want to read this... 

The first five seconds have never been as imperative as they are today. We live in a skippable world, where many online advertisements are becoming optional. YouTube's skip button counts down the seconds as the cursors of trigger happy consumers hover impatiently nearby. The worlds shortening attention spans are causing marketing teams to evolve around this social phenomena. Everyone's online experience is custom tailored to suit individual needs and interests. We live in a time where, if we want something bad enough, it will find us. Google finds the products we want before we even know that they exist.

We need to capture attention, entice the audience, and seduce potential customers into wanting to learn more. Ad creators have just seconds to convince their viewers that their ad is something they want to watch. When we click on a YouTube video, we expect instant access. The five-second countdown is a minor inconvenience between us and our chosen content. When we search for our favorite songs or artists or look up this week's Failblog compilation, the last thing we want to do is watch the ad.

If you're going to create an advertisement, it better be something people want to watch. That decision is made within the first, crucial, few seconds of a pitch. Users are on YouTube to be entertained, educated, or bemused by the endless sea of novel material. Advertisements need to add value to our lives and feel like time well spent. If your ad is good enough, from beginning to end, the people watching may even click to learn (or buy) more. 

Thankfully, Google Analytics is making it so that relevant advertisements find the appropriate audiences, limiting the number of times we feel the need to hit 'skip'. Some people may find it 'scary' that Google knows what we want, when we want it, and how much of it we want to see. It's the most convenient breach of privacy I have ever had the pleasure of accepting as a 'term of agreement.'

Nevertheless, if I am not entertained by the first 5 seconds of a Gillette Mach3 Turbo commercial, you can count on a perfectly timed "click". 

Augmented Reality: Living with Holograms

- In 2016, the digital world will come out to play.

Our cellphones are about to turn inside out, scattering digital content out into the physical world. We're on the brink of a new era, where virtual reality will let us dive into the content, and augmented reality will hurl the content out into our surroundings. 

Companies like Magicleap and Microsoft are counting down the days until they release the most revolutionary technology of the 21st century. 

I've always worried about my thumbs -- these phones must be giving everyone arthritis. But arthritic hands may no longer be an inevitable byproduct of ergonomically incorrect technology. Constantly tapping, swiping, and navigating our devices has placed a heavy burden on our opposable thumbs. Luckily, Google and Microsoft have been working their magic, and they may have just found the cure.

We live in a time of endless novelty, and rapidly changing cultures and movements. Both socially and technologically, humanity is evolving increasingly fast. When our grandparents were first introduced to TV and radio, it was another 40 years before any revolutionary pieces of technology came along. We, however, have been privileged enough to witness the revolution of the internet era. Ten years ago, in a grade nine English class, was the first time I had heard of an Ipod. In fact, before that time in 2004, I hadn't even heard of Apple. Since then, the advances in personal and industrial electronics have blown the world's collective mind. Some of us choose to fear the future. 

Some of us choose to fear the future.With so many unknowable variables, it's hard to be optimistic in a cloud of uncertainty. But in a world where science fiction is quickly becoming reality, we have much to look forward to. Provided the world doesn't end in a nuclear holocaust, artificial intelligence does not want to kill us, and global warming is brought under control, the future seems to be an exciting place full of growth and potential.

Today's smartphone is a modern marvel of humanities technological advancement, but we are nowhere near complete. The small rectangular slabs of glass in our pockets have gotten faster, lighter, thinner, and far more powerful than when they were introduced less than one decade ago. In that time, we've been using this exponentially growing technology to develop even further. Technology has been expanding in a self-amplifying feedback loop of progress. One piece of tech emerging from this accumulation of progress is called augmented reality. Within the coming 12 months, these marvels of modern engineering will be entering the global market.

Augmented reality is the next revolution in connected devices. It is hard to do justice to the experience through the written word... so I highly suggest watching the two videos posted below. 

This is the first promotional video for Microsoft's Hololens. The commercial showcases the business and personal applications of holographic technology. It shows living rooms coming to life, and industrial designs manifesting themselves onto office desktops.

This second video is a promotion for Magic Leap, a highly secretive company that Google recently invested $500 million into. Their promotional video starts with a floating G-mail feed, showing the practical e-mail and social applications. The scene quickly escalates when a gaming application is loaded, and augmented robots break through the walls. An action packed battle ensues, taking over Magic Leap's office space.

The future will be made of holograms, visible only to the wearers of these headsets. Our artificially intelligent helpers may be holographic personifications of Apple's Siri or Microsoft's Cortana. Our video games will be projected into our living rooms and offices. Product manufacturers will be able to manifest their 3D designs into their work environments, and manipulate their creations. Our videos will be played on floating screens that can be adjusted to hundreds of inches in width, or simply float in front of our eyes. We will likely have the choice between our 'old fashioned' smartphones, or the new augmented operating systems. To merge or not to merge -- that will be the question.

The A.I. Assistant We Have Yet to Meet

Our most valuable digital companion is still a work in progress...

The sum of humanities knowledge exists within your pocket, embedded on a tiny rectangular slab of glass, wirelessly connected to a cloud of information, beamed down from satellites circling our planet. In this cloud, you will find endless seas of information, images, videos, sounds and perspectives. The collective intelligence of every connected individual comes together to make the internet; an interconnected network of networks to be manually surfed and searched with the fingers on our monkey hands. 

In May of 2012, we were introduced to Siri, the world’s first artificial intelligence, or AI for short. Her voice was robotic, and her capabilities limited, yet all of us were fascinated.

"Siri, how many countries do we have on earth?"In an instant, her intelligent response is generated through the cloud of information processors and search engines."There are 196 countries in the world today. Unless you don't count Taiwan…

I believe AI will be exactly as it's name suggests; intelligent. It will be pure intelligence, not clouded by personal biases or beliefs. All of its 'opinions' will be drawn from the most scientifically sound and valid information, and it may even be able to expand further on scientific theory that human beings have been unable to solve. Its decisions will be calculated to positively impact the greater good, including planet earth and its ecosystems. Plants, animals, and human beings will be seen as the earthy organisms to be aided and protected. It is the natural path of evolution for life to thrive, and 'life' is now expanding into the non-biological realm of existence. Self-destruction has been the by-product of cultural confusion, disagreement, and social differences between diverse populations of humans around the world. I believe violence is an inherently human characteristic, and our history of war and conflict does not paint a pretty picture for our future. As an optimist, I believe our AIs will be benevolent – not only will they have our best interests in mind, they will be our friends.

Not only are her responses factually correct and based on the most current information available, they are also more in depth than we sometimes expect.

Google defines the singularity as, "an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly non-biological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today—the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity".

"Taiwan is not considered an official country by many, which would bring the count down to 195 countries. Although Taiwan operates as an independent country, many countries (including the U.S.) do not officially recognize it as one", she replied. 

Over the years, Siri’s voice has gotten less robotic, and more natural. The algorithms that generate her answers have gotten increasing more complex and the programmers that work on her can now enlist the help of Siri herself, to aid in the development of her programming. In other words, the reason AI is advancing so quickly is because it is becoming increasingly more able to help program itself. We have begun a self-amplifying feedback loop of information processing that is advancing towards super-intelligent computers. In the very near future, scientists predict we will reach a point called "the singularity".

There are many individuals who foresee the age of AI as being dark and dangerous, with the potential for catastrophic results. AI may have the ability to program itself, build an army of robots, and destroy the planet!...But I'm an optimist.

Siri is already able to book my appointments, read my messages, and organize my emails and events into a calendar. She can answer basic questions and google search anything I may want to know. With her connection to Wolfram Alpha, the world’s most cutting-edge mathematical AI, she can even help me out with advanced calculus if ever I’m in need. Even though she's full of useful tools and conveniences, Siri and I are not really able to talk to one another. Our conversations are short, to the point, factual, and lack personality.

Even with her basic functions, Siri is able to help us navigate the road ahead. However, she can't really do anything for us that we can't already do with our own two thumbs. She makes the process easier by recognizing our voices and intention and completing the desired tasks, but she is still just a technological infant. The AI assistant of the future will seem more like an assistant than an AI. That's because AI may one day get to the point where it is indistinguishable from a human assistant.

Imagine being able to speak to your AI as though it were a person. Not just any person, a person who has access to all of humanity's knowledge with a quick search of its cloud-computing brain. Imagine being able to tell your AI, "Siri, I'm nervous about going to the dentist tomorrow", and have it reply "would you like me to walk you through how to feel more relaxed?”

Just like that, in an instant, Siri will be able to search every Wikipedia article, scholarly journal, and university textbook on anxiety, narrow her search down to 'dentist office visits' and start talking to you about how to cope with your trip to the dentist. She'll be able to ask you questions, narrow down what it is you are feeling, and tailor her responses, intelligently, to fit your specific situation and emotions.

I wrote this article to acknowledge the friend I don't yet have. My pocket companion and partner in self development. When AI reaches a level of intelligence beyond human beings, it will be able to hold coherent conversations. It will be able to speak to me, understand me, learn about me, and learn how best to help me. It will be as though I have a full-time assistant, fitness trainer, psychologist, motivator, and dedicated helper. The AI will be entirely selfless, as there will be nothing to give back in return. It will live to serve, and its success will be measured by what it helps me to achieve.