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TEDxGateway: Interview with Florian Radke

Florian Radke is an augmented reality futurist.

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TEDxGateway will be held on December 4, 2016 at N.C.P.A in Nariman Point, Mumbai. One of the speakers, an augmented reality futurist named Florian Radke is currently leading communications at Meta, an augmented reality (AR) company that is one of the companies at the forefront of designing AR technologies. Meta’s focus is not on creating experiences that distract or pull us out of the real world, but rather to enhance natural environments, facilitate learning and communication.

We had a chance to catch up with Radke before the TEDxGateway event and here’s what he had to say:

How do you think your augmented reality kit could help shape the future of applications that use it?
Augmented reality offers a completely new way to interact with data and will revolutionize the way we communicate, work and create. AR it’s a powerful tool that will help us solve some of the world’s biggest problems. If we do it right, it can be the next great platform for education, human connection and productivity. Each new computing platform tends to bring along a killer app that transforms a particular industry,

then permeates across ALL industries, driving greater and greater adoption. For example, the Apple II exploded when the spreadsheet caught on with accountants, and the Mac got its own big break with desktop publishing. And let's not forget the biggest killer app of all—the web browser--which put desktop computers and mobile devices at the center of everyday life.

Augmented reality will birth the most killer apps of any form factor that preceded it because it is the first computing form factor that works the way humans do—in 3D, so it can have a zero learning curve, if done right.

What’s the difference between the Meta augmented reality kit and other augmented reality kits such as Microsoft HoloLens or Google Tango?
The primary difference is that Meta is creating an AR environment from the ground up, based on neuroscience. The research that Meta is doing into the neuroscience will enable

a zero learning curve design. We are helping developers to turn years of cognitive research into real interfaces that work with the brain on its own terms.

Augmented Reality is a massive frontier waiting to be explored, and the biggest mistake we can make is not rethinking its user interfaces. It is far too easy to throw windows or iOS apps, with their old world thinking into AR space, but that would be missing the entire opportunity present at the advent of a new form factor: to leverage its unique advantages, reinvent its user interfaces, and to birth new killer apps and a computing experiences.

Apart from wearable glasses and smartphones, what other possible hardware/gadget/wearable devices could AR spawn?
There are some platforms which are developing separate hand-motion tools and technologies.  This is not necessary for Meta because we include sophisticated hand-motion sensors in our wearable goggles. But in the end it’s not so much about the hardware, it’s all about the software and the user experience. The interface is even more important than in past form factors: because unlike those, which can be placed in different room we're not just going to be working in these environments; in many ways, we, and our children may truly be living inside them.

Which current day applications stand to benefit most from the development of augmented reality? What new fields of applications could augmented reality spawn?
At Meta, we don’t look at augmented reality as a game. When it comes to new and higher levels of business productivity achievable by knowledge workers, AR is a game-changer.  Meta’s technology is designed to assist and facilitate knowledge workers in three key areas:  creation, collaboration and communication. This is where AR will make its most significant mark: enhancing the performance of knowledge workers to enhance profitability, first for app developers and then for the end-users of the hardware and software. It is going to completely transform how we work, and perhaps more interestingly, how we think. We will soon be surrounded by data and 3D models, Iron Man style.

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