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Facebook held its annual F8 developers’ conference this week, revealing its plans for the future. While in the past the company has changed the way we communicate with others, Facebook has even bigger plans for our future.
At the conference, Facebook shared its plans for radically changing the way we communicate. While these changes sound like something out of a science fiction novel, Facebook’s goal is to launch these within the next 10 years.
Imagine:
- Typing with your mind
- Hearing with your skin
- Playing games and visiting your friends in augmented and virtual reality.
Don’t laugh. These all may come true, sooner than you think.
(Or not. The Facebook phone was never the success that the company had planned.)
Typing with Your Mind
Imagine typing words not with your fingers, nor your voice, but with your mind. You might think you’d have to have brain implants to translate your thoughts into written words. But Facebook wants you to be able to do this without implants.
In addition to being convenient for all of us, this technology could help people who are paralyzed and don’t have use of their hands.
Facebook would scan your brain 100 times a second to figure out what you want to say, then would type it onto a computer screen. The speed of typing would be up to 100 words per minute, faster than most humans can type using their hands.
This project began six months ago and Facebook is now working on this with University of California San Francisco, University of California Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University and Washington University in St. Louis.
According to Facebook, you would not have all of your thoughts typed, just the ones you want to share. No word on how Facebook can tell the difference between the two.
From Facebook: “This isn’t about decoding your random thoughts. Think of it like this: You take many photos and choose to share only some of them. Similarly, you have many thoughts and choose to share only some of them. This is about decoding those words you’ve already decided to share by sending them to the speech center of your brain.”
Hearing with Your Skin
Some day we may tell our grandchildren that we once used our ears for hearing. That’s right, Facebook might make our ears obsolete by allowing us to hear through our skin.
This technology could also help people who are hearing impaired be able to hear without implants.
Using both hardware and software, Facebook hopes to have your skin replicate the way your ears hear and interpret sound waves. A test subject was able to hear nine words through her skin.
Facebook Augmented Reality
Facebook wants to improve your reality by adding to it. Using special glasses you will be able to see things in your world that only exist through the lenses of these glasses.
Imaging sitting in your living room, looking at an empty table, then putting on Facebook glasses and seeing a chess set on that table. You and a friend could play chess using Facebook glasses, as if you were sitting across the table from them.
You could also control what your friends are seeing when you live stream video to them on Facebook Live. Add a cup of coffee to your table, make it steaming hot, then add a second cup so you don’t look like you’re alone.
Facebook will let you add frames, sports equipment, drawings and more to your videos and photos. You can even create your own frames to share with others.
Facebook Spaces – Virtual Reality
Can’t get together with your friends in person? Facebook Spaces is a new virtual reality feature that will let you hang out with them around the world, as if you were all together.
Spaces will use avatars people create from a photo of themselves on Facebook. These avatars will appear in Spaces so you can hang out with kind of a cartoon version of your friends.
You view Spaces through a virtual reality viewer and can invite others via Facebook Messenger. Spaces lets you visit with your friends in virtual places around the world.
This video shows how Spaces lets friends get together in virtual worlds.
Your Thoughts
Would you like to type using your mind instead of your hands or voice? Would you try hearing with your skin? Would you like to hang out with your friends in augmented or virtual reality?
Share your thoughts in the Comments section below!
*Facebook cover image (edited) courtesy of Anthony Quintano via Flickr and Creative Commons
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Hello Carolyn.
Haha…hearing with your skin and typing with your mind!!!! That is awesome…and i dont really doubt it will happen.
I really like the coffee gif you have shared…
A few Days back, Me and my friend were talking about the future from a technology perspective and our ideas were something like you mentioned above.
The future technology is all about the AR. In the future, the smartphones (In the hands of every human) can talk to our real world. Snapchat has recently added some filters and now this FB specs thing.
After reading your post, I realized that it is not future, we are living that era. We are already in future.
Really Excited about it.
Thank Carolyn for sharing the glimpse of future. Enjoyed it
Hi Jayant, Good point. Facebook announced that its plans are to bring this tech to us within 10 years. But these advancements may come much sooner than that. You’re right, augmented and virtual reality are already here. In the future we will see exciting and innovative uses for them.
Wonderful article.I really like facebook spaces and when it comes in future I really want to hang out with my best friend who has left to another country
Hi Mohammed, Yes, it will be fun to hang out in virtual reality with friends around the world. Even if your friends are sitting next to you in real life you could use Facebook Spaces to travel around the world virtually together!
I’m really amazed by the box of pandora that Mark opened the other day, Carolyn. It had so many things…I can feel it is the start of the end of smartphones!!
Things will change as how we communicate or how we browse for data..everything. But its the Virtual reality is what sends jitters down the spine. If everything will be so virtual like the “Facebook spaces” AV then we are indeed headed towards a life that is fake, non-existant and horrifying
Hi Jitendra, You bring up an excellent point. The more people add to their reality, the less we will be able to know what is true and what is false. Is someone drinking a steaming cup of coffee with someone else or are they sitting alone in front of an empty table? While these features seem fun, they also may be used for deceptive purposes. We need to be careful about embracing technology before considering the consequences.
hmm… Now I’m even at the rate at which these tech companies are turning the world into. We now live completely in a virtual world. It’s kinda crazy.
Hi Peter, Good point. I don’t know how we are going to be able to tell what’s real and what isn’t soon. As the tech improves, we may not be able to figure out whether someone is actually in the location they say they’re in, even if we see it.
Thanks for that post – looks like some very interesting stuff is coming from facebook in the next few years (it any of it actually happens of course!). I like the idea of virtual spaces – that would be cool & should be doable. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Matt, Yes the ideas of hearing with your skin and typing with your mind don’t seem doable, but Facebook may prove us wrong! The virtual spaces seem really cool. How awesome would it be to hang out with your friends virtually on a Caribbean beach in the winter. Next best thing to actually being there.
Facebook always impress us with its new crazy projects.i really want to try their VR project and also augmented VR can’t wait to see how it is really looks like when using it with your Facebook friends.
Hi Mohammed, Good point. Facebook really is looking into the future with its plans. Hanging out with my Facebook friends in a virtual world seems pretty cool. It would be fun to pick places to hang out virtually together!