Subtitle: The power of powerful use cases

I’m a terrible futurist. In the mid-90s I proudly made these predictions:

• Apple would shrink to obsurity, and
• Adobe’s new Portable Document Format (PDF) was nothing more than a flash in the pan, to be obsolete by the next millennium

Both embarrassingly wrong. And that was just the As!

I was reminded of this as I watched the Super Bowl last night, and reviewed my prediction from three years ago, in my personal blog. An excerpt about what I envisioned last night’s Super Bowl Halftime Show could be like:

What if … the rigging that showcases the singers and dancers was far simpler, and the other world that is conjured is created in a metaverse? And what if we get to see that world be sculpted, one sweeping plane of light at a time?

Imagine half time has just started, and everyone in the stands sees an assembly taking place through their augmented reality (AR) glasses. The set for the musicians and dancers is constructed over and around pipes and stage planks, by real artists on the field, using virtual light they have mastered.

We see those sculpting talents through something like Google Tilt … video embedded below.

I stand by everything I wrote then about the metaverse. What has changed has more to do with the undeniable ability of AI to address far more — and far more consequential — use cases than AR/VR ever can.

Whereas AR/VR experiences bring us together as humans, AI has proven to be pretty good at replacing humans. At least the human reasoning part. Alas, those use cases completely outshine being able to work and play remotely. And investment dollars follow profitable use cases.

The only consolation was from Meta. This ad shows off the AR glasses co-branded with Ray-Ban (an image from one of the series released last night):

Well, it’s a start.