November 13, 2023
2 mins
Opening the Virtual Gate
The next few years are going to see a new wave of digital immersion. If AI is the matchstick, AR & VR are the dormant, but increasing pile of tinder, waiting to erupt into a new kind of commerce- one that is utterly immersive, interactive and fully in-tune with you.
That virtual gate may feel distant, but it is primed to open. We’re seeing the use of AI across the board as an increasing lever to allow people to work faster, smarter and create new things. It’s the new jet fuel stimulating the economy, But that also means the backend of every system designed to engage and retain you, will also be getting a fiery boost from AI too.
So what happens if you put that added firepower into evolving techs like AR & VR? Well, I’d argue we’re primed for a new era of shopping, where the boundary of that digital commerce starts slipping neatly into the physical world around you. Where everything that is currently physical will see a new plane of digital influence.
You’re already seeing players like Amazon pushing options to ‘see this in your room’, which allows you to blend those two worlds from your phone. But that’s a limited case study, considering how wide this tech could reach.
In fact, Apple announced their latest gadget, the first VR headset which looks to be a sleek, sublime game-changer, as with most of the era-defining technologies. This might mean that you find yourself swapping a lot of your screens for one multi-dimensional piece of tech. You can interact with a YouTube clip, but also walk around your house.
What if you now could walk up to a mirror and see that latest piece of clothing in your basket on your own physical body? Mapped perfectly to your individual contours and utterly reflective of how the item might actually look on you? Or if you could see how your hairstyle might look, if you were brave and went for the cut you’d always thought about but never followed through on?
All of these aspects of existing industries will be radically boosted by an injection of personality. The ability to personalize the experience and tweak it, right down to the way your hair sweeps off your forehead is a dormant confetti cannon for personalized marketing.
The potential is so huge, but what’s more, it adds so much seamless value to people’s lives, that it will likely be adopted far more readily than other tech of that nature.
Whilst an Alexa or Google Home is fairly limited in scope, the very nature of AR & particularly VR is that you can port it into so many different applications. A comparison might be how the fax machine was a good bit of tech, but highly limited. But a lateral piece of tech, the phone, had so many applications (quite literally), that it allowed the technology to develop into a ubiquitous, monolithic device that underpins most communications globally.
And now we are on the edge of another era shift. Into an immense, immersive internet, converging the digital and physical together. This fluid, interactive reality will be the vibrant ecosystem that allows us new avenues for commerce than ever before.
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