While artificial intelligence dominates tech news (perhaps too much), a humble Israeli start-up is quietly working on a sea change. Sightful, with a team of just 60 individuals, is launching a product that could pave the way for a profound transformation in computing and beyond. A transformation that does without screens and monitors.
Spacetop, personal space becomes workspace
Sightful's first product is called Spacetops. And it's billed as "the world's first augmented reality laptop." Open the package and you find a keyboard, a mouse and a (bulky for my taste) visor, which resembles large sports sunglasses. By wearing it, the user sees multiple “virtual” monitors floating above the keyboard. It's like carrying around 100-inch screens in your backpack.
Spacetop does not immerse users in a completely virtual reality, but enriches the personal environment with additional digital elements. In summary, it is true augmented reality (AR). All round. By wearing the glasses, you are still in your environment: you can interact with others, drink your coffee, get up and walk around. Only, in the spot you establish there are giant monitors that not even in Cape Canaveral.
And that should change everything?
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying Spacetop will immediately change the tech landscape as we know it. These glasses, as mentioned, are still quite large and the field of view of the virtual projections is still too narrow to give the illusion of monitors existing in real space.
Yet, I see in Sightful an approach that could seriously propel AR into everyday use. Unlike Magic Leap, the Google-backed start-up that wasted billions trying to develop a device, here's a product that has potential.
Spacetop addresses a specific problem that AR is uniquely equipped to solve: limited monitor space for mobile computing. For this reason, it is likely that the first users will be precisely those who "feel the problem the most". And then?
The future without monitors: a scenario
In some time Sightful (or another company) will reduce the size of its AR glasses and extend the field of view appealing to a larger market segment. This potential will attract large players: companies like Apple will develop "combined" terminals (a "MacPhone", perhaps foldable, computers to be combined with "iGlass", AR viewers that will act as monitors). Other companies like Samsung will follow suit, developing high-end AR “TV” devices. Augmented reality gaming experiences will arrive in cascade (or first?)
In less than a decade, with the convergence of all these functions into unique devices with reasonable prices and small dimensions, we could find ourselves in a world without or almost no monitors. The computational part will be "supported" by cloud and AI, and will be presented to us in digital projections on thin optical guides (if you like, call them "lenses") positioned a few centimeters from our eyes.
In the future, the digital space will be an integral part of our visual space, going far beyond the confines of our current monitors: but that's yet another scenario. We'll talk again.
