Computers used to exist in some far away place and take up a room. There were very few in the world. Computers eventually shrunk and moved into the home- occupying a desk in the house. Computers shrunk further into laptops, then to tablets and mobile phones. The computers are now constantly pressed against our skin. Soon we will wear them on our face. The implantation of computers under our skin or inside our skulls has been a story happening in slow motion over the course of 60 or so years. This is the inevitable conclusion.
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So I'm going to have to go to the apple store for major surgery every 12-24 months? No thanks.
Seriously though, we long ago reached the limits of audio and stopped innovating there. We're close to that for 2d screen visuals (8K, full visible colour spectrum, etc).
It is neat to think about what being able to reproduce media at the limits of perception might be.
We haven't reached the limits of audio yet. People still complain about noisy neighbors, or roads or airports they live close to. They still have to wear earphones.
One thing which I think might happen in the next 30 years is advanced cochlear implants or maybe something that directly stimulates the auditory nerve, while disabling the borne with hearing machinery. This sounds a bit cruel, but think of it: running everything through a digital layer of noise filtering would make so many things easier. Society wouldn't have to care how loud something is. The people not opting for the technology will have a hard time enduring all the noise...
The stapediuus regulation capacities are quite limited, and we already constantly wear headphones.
> This sounds a bit cruel, but think of it: running everything through a digital layer of noise filtering would make so many things easier. Society wouldn't have to care how loud something is.
If we had such technology such that humans wouldn’t care, the environment surely would. Noise pollution is a problem for the animal kingdom: communication and noise levels of whales, birds, bats, etc.
the "analogous" physical structure of hearing serves many functions not replicated by cochlear implant. Focusing on one signal during noise is in fact much more difficult with an implant.
Of course current implants are really bad compared to natural hearing, and only implanted to people whose alternatives are even worse. The technology I'm talking about doesn't exist yet.
I arrived at this view because humans are a visual species. Even if you can build a digital camera that's as good as the eye or better (currently you can't, at least not at the size of the eye), the task of processing the data so that it can be used for nerve stimulation would be beyond any computers at reasonable sizes. On the other hand, we can build really good microphones that are more sensitive than human ears and can do a ton of processing that makes such a device worthwhile.
The optic nerve has 770k-1.5M axons while the cochlear nerve has only 30k. Over a magnitude of a difference.
So I believe that a augmented reality kind of experience with devices built under your skin will be limited to ears first, simply because it's easier to pull off technically. Everything else would still have to travel through your pupils in some fashion. 2OEH8eoCRo0 was talking about technology under your skin. Google glass, vr glasses, or even lcd screen contact lenses wouldn't fall under that definition.
I don’t think we’ve reached the limits of audio yet, we have yet to figure out a (scalable) way to measure personalized HRTFs for truly immersive spatial audio
I agree with your comment broadly, but I think I disagree with respect to audio - have you had time to check out audio ray tracing?