SuperSight: What Augmented Reality Means for Our Lives, Our Work, and the Way We Imagine the Future

For thousands of years, human vision has been largely unchanged by evolution.

We’re about to get a software update.

Today, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Snap, Samsung, and a host of startups are racing to radically change the way we see. The building blocks are already falling into place: cloud computing and 5G networks, AI computer vision algorithms, smart glasses and VR headsets, and mixed reality games like Pokémon GO. But what’s coming next is a fundamental shift in how we experience the world and interact with each other.

Over the next decade, what we see and how we see it will no longer be bound by biology. Instead, our everyday vision will be augmented with digital information to give us what spatial computing pioneer David Rose calls “SuperSight.” And as our view of the world becomes blended layers of information delivered via glasses, contact lenses, or projected light, it will fundamentally change learning, shopping, work, play, and much, much more.

David provides an insider’s guide to the way our lives are about to change, while also unpacking the downsides of this coming world—what he calls the hazards of SuperSight, from equity and access issues to bubble filter problems—and proposing rational, actionable ways around them.

From AI mirrors that advise us on our outfits, to museums that let us talk with deceased explorers and artists, to the ways we envision sustainable cities, the scope of augmented vision is boundless. SuperSight offers a rich speculative preview of the future and its implications, both shocking and thrilling.