I gave a short talk at an industry conference today. Because the schedule was packed, I got exactly ten minutes to present a “vision of the future”.
Fortunately, I had my trusty Chalktalk interactive drawing program as my presentation tool. So I used it to create a demonstration of what that future might feel like.
My fundamental thesis was that augmented reality is indeed coming, but that this isn’t the interesting part. The interesting part is what will happen after everybody starts being able to make drawings in the air, or on any surface, as part of everyday casual conversation, especially when those drawings can come to life, moving over time to express dynamic ideas and relationships.
I argued that eventually this will change the nature of human language itself, as kids grow up in a “Harry Potter meets Harold and the Purple Crayon” world. To that generation, such things will seem perfectly ordinary.
So I used the ten minutes to connect Augmented Reality, dynamic drawing, and the future of language. The trick was that I was able to illustrate that future in the form of a live demo.