原创 Science fiction and reality

A number of things amaze me about today's high-technology, including the fact that it's so pervasive and it sneaks up on you while you aren't looking. The result is that you end up using all sorts of cool things and you forget what life was like without them.

Now, I know there are a lot of young people who don’t actually remember a time before the Internet, but even those of us who are older tend to forget the way things were. When I was a kid, for example, we had one small black-and-white television whose main display was a cathode ray tube and whose electronics was vacuum tube-based. I would never have dreamed of having high-definition color televisions in just about every room of my house as I do now.

We also had one black dial telephone wired into the wall in the hallway. I had to ask my parents' permission to make a call. I would never have conceived of a world in which everyone -- including young kids -- strolls around carrying smartphones that can take pictures and videos, send emails, run apps, and show locations using GPS.

What about computers? When I was a student in the UK the late 1970s, there was an advert in the Practical Electronics hobbyist magazine for a single-board computer boasting an 8-bit microprocessor, a hex keypad, a smattering of 7-segment displays, 1 Kbyte of RAM, and 1 Kbyte of ROM… and it was way more than I could possibly afford. At that time, I never thought I would ever own my own computer. Now I'm surrounded by the little scamps (as I pen this column, I'm facing a wall of four 28-inch monitors).

The reason I'm waffling on about this is that so many things that were considered to be in the realm of science fiction in the not-so-distant past are now taken for granted. But the really strange thing is that, when most of us see or hear about something that doesn’t exist yet, we still think of it as still being in the realm of science fiction or -- at best -- being in the far distant future.

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times… the future is closer than you think. As one example, how about a techno-telepathic, non-invasive brain-to-brain interface in which one person thinks about pressing the fire button on a computer game. This brain signal is detected and transmitted across the Internet to a second person whose finger moves in response. Science fiction, you say? Well, not according to this article from the University of Washington.

How about mind-reading? This is, of course, an old staple of science fiction, but surely it's not possible… or is it?

Are you aware of the work being performed by Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at U.C. Berkeley? Basically he gets a subject to watch a video, and he reconstructs that video by scanning the brain of the person watching the video (while the person is watching it, of course). As you can see from this video, this technology is still in its early days, but -- even so -- it's significantly more advanced than I think most of us would have suspected.

Think about the holodeck on Star Trek? The idea was that users could walk into a special room in which they could have a totally immersive 3D virtual reality experience.

Surely we are going to have to wait a long, long time before we can experience anything like this. Well, maybe not. As you may recall, I recently pledged to the Kickstarter campaign for the forthcoming Obduction immersive reality game. (Click here to see my blog.)

Now, imagine taking a stroll around the virtual Obduction world shown above while wearing an Oculus Rift virtual headset. This little beauty is set to change the gaming industry by providing a truly immersive 3D experience. As you move your head, the scene changes to reflect this movement without any discernible latency or artifacts.

When I say "taking a stroll," I'm not simply talking about pressing forward, back, left, and right buttons on a joystick. No! I'm talking about something like the Omni Treadmill that allows you to actually walk or run around the virtual world of your choice.

How about combining the Omni with the Oculus Rift? Now, I'm not really one for shoot 'em up-type games, but take a look at this video and tell me what you think.

I can really see myself using this technology to wander around the Obduction world. But wait, there's more. First we have gesture recognition and control, which is starting to come online. Existing systems are primarily targeted at controlling your desktop computer. Future incarnations will be able to do so much more, including identifying and recognizing posture, gait, emotions (from facial expressions and other body language cues), and so forth.

There's yet more. A startup company called Ultrahaptics aims to bring the sense of touch to touchless interfaces and -- by extension -- virtual worlds. Based on research performed at the University of Bristol in the UK, this technology uses ultrasound to project sensations through the air and directly onto the users' hands. The end result, as seen in this video, is that the user can feel touchless buttons, obtain feedback from mid-air gestures, and interact with virtual objects in virtual worlds.

Some of these technologies are still in their formative stages. Others are more advanced. What we've discussed here may well be just the tip of the iceberg. I honestly believe that most of us have no idea just how much the world will change in the coming years. Hold onto your hats, because it's going to be an exciting ride!