Full Frame: The Future of Technology

Full Frame

Emerging technologies are redefining how we live. What are the innovations that will transform our world?

China’s Tech Future

In China, the next frontier of technology advancement is in artificial intelligence. A national AI plan has helped the technology enter industries like healthcare and manufacturing.

“China’s AI companies are entering into a new phase,” said Winston Ma, author and adjunct professor at New York University School of Law. “Now they have to further develop that technology and then, more importantly, find more application business cases in the large economy.”

Blockchain is a decentralized digital database, which, proponents say, offers greater transparency, security and lower costs. In 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a speech about the importance of blockchain.

“That was really phenomenal,” Ma said. “Blockchain is such a hyped but not fully proven technology. So, President Xi’s remarks actually represented the first major global economy leader to endorse this interesting but unproven technology.”

The Metaverse

Gaming has helped advance and popularize virtual reality. Two of the companies at the forefront of VR gaming are HTC Vive and Bitone.

Beyond gaming, virtual reality can apply to many other industries. Sophia Moshasha has helped companies and government agencies to figure out how to use VR to accomplish their goals. She’s the vice president of the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Virtual Reality – Augmented Reality Association and co-hosts their podcast called “Everything VR and AR.

Moshasha said one of the best uses for VR is in job training, such as for police officers and other high-risk professions.

“I always said that VR was the next best thing to doing things in real life,” she said. “When you’re making people do things and experience things, they understand the good things that can come out of it. They can understand the consequences that are coming out of actions.”

The metaverse refers to a virtual reality universe where users can interact with others. Facebook is betting that the metaverse will be the next generation of the internet. The social media giant says it plans to hire 10,000 people to work on its virtual reality platform. And it’s even changed its company name to ‘Meta.’

“Being able to connect with people that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise, being able to dream up any possibility that you want to in this metaverse of spaces… I think the possibilities are endless,” Moshasha said.