From revolutionizing the way children learn, to surrounding us with instant, usable information, this is where the 'smart' in phones really comes to the fore
From the swirl of updates that panned out at yesterday’s Google I/O, it was easy to get scooped up in the excitement of Android M (absence of new hardware notwithstanding.) With all the good bits in their upcoming OS--the simplified app permissions, Android Pay, the battery-life-doubling doze mode et al--there were were two announcements that particularly jumped out at me. Ones that I believe have the power to affect seismic changes to the way we live and learn.
Google Expedition
About two hours into the presentation, in fact near the fag end almost, Clay Bavor (VP Product Management at Google), went through the motions of announcing the new updates surrounding their VR work. Google Cardboard, primarily. Apart from the fact that this cheap, foldable VR headgear for the masses is revised to accept larger phones, what really made me sit up was Google Expedition.
The concept is itself exciting--a system that can be used in classrooms where a teacher can effectively ‘orchestrate’ a virtual tour as a classful of students wearing Google Cardboard experience the virtual tour together. Think about it--from an age where instruction and teaching was via spoken word and written text, then pictures, then video, this puts visual instruction on a totally heightened plane. Experiential instruction.
It is well know that children--especially those in the 1-4 year age group--have a massive ability to learn. Add in VR as a medium of instruction and the teacher is suddenly firing their neurons on another level altogether. This reminds me of a book I read--Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer--where the author talks about a human’s capacity to absorb information and concepts. Basically, the more ‘connections’ that are made among the pieces of information, the more ‘tightly’ they can be retained in memory. These connections comprise inputs from the five senses--sounds heard, sights seen, even tastes, touch and smells. Most formal learning and instruction happens via sight and sound, but VR takes this several notches upward.
Experiencing the Grand Canyon by actually flying through it, or delving into the very construct of human DNA, all the while looking around in 360-degree freedom is learning on steroids. Of course there hurdles: building such engaging experiences, perfecting the technology so that it is usable at length (early-stage VR is notorious for causing nausea during extended use.) But the possibilities it opens for learning are hands down exciting.
Watch Expedition explained here:
Now on Tap
The very implication of ‘smartphone’ just got redefined. During her presentation at the I/O event, Aparna Chennapragada (Director of Product Management at Google) blew the audience away with a near-sentient display of Android M running the ‘Now on Tap’ feature. Think of those auto-suggested Google Now cards Android users are accustomed to. Then imagine it working in completely generic situations where it almost magically extracts context and offers up relevant, useable suggestions. And all of this requiring no special programming on the part of app developers--the feature recognizes what’s on screen and taps into the vast power of Google’s Knowledge Graph before making suggestions that are so relevant, it’s borderline scary. Locations, songs playing, images on screen are all recognized, in context, as the phone infers what you want and responds with relevant answers.
Watch Now on Tap demonstrated in this CNET video from the event:
Watch this space as we follow these game-changing developments as they surface in the months ahead.
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