Technology Is Reinventing Humanity | Jordan Nguyen | TEDxSydney

 

Everyday we as humans are integrated with more and more technology around us in the digital world. The problem is we are starting to blur this line between reality and augmented reality, as we integrate this technology, we are allowing technology to augment us.

The world is changing very very quickly.

In 80s, there was a rise in virtual reality. There were headsets which you can put on your head and it would make a very immersive experience. But it was overshadowed with the rise of internet. However, people could see that there was potential for this technology.

The speaker gave an example of a project that he did for his University. A wheelchair that works by reading the mind of the person sitting on it. That needed integration of the AI in the wheelchair and the wheelchair could think for itself. The wheelchair had cameras that work like the eyes. This was back in 2008. And you can imagine the advances in technology since then.

The rise in virtual reality went into a rise yet again back in 2012 with the invention of the Oculus Rift. The speaker gives his example of experiencing the oculus rift for the first time in which he was in a virtual room watching virtual TV. He remembers this as if it were a real memory from his life. It made the speaker realize that we were standing at a major technological revolution. This is because he still remembered the wheelchair which saw from its own eyes and had saved a 3d picture of the person it was observing. This would mean that we could possibly create replicas of ourselves.

This means that we can create virtual copies of famous people in history in the digital world and go and meet them as if they were still alive. People like Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein. Or, we could preserve members of our family in the digital world.

So what if we create replicas of ourselves at each stage of our lives and go back in the past to meet them. It is a very interesting idea to explore as it would give us insights about ourselves, about our visions in life back then and how we think now. In the video, the speaker also demonstrated this idea to the audience, in which he met a virtual copy of himself which was created back in the past. Although it wasn’t that developed, it was still a pretty interesting idea.