This Week in New Age Technology: 11_15_2021
Bite sized news on disruptive technology, every week.
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Augmented Reality👓
Niantic CEO Cautions the Dangers of Virtual Metaverse
Last week at the Augmented World Expo the CEO for Niantic, the company behind the AR game Pokémon Go, gave a pretty serious talk about the dangers of a virtual Metaverse and their companies vision for a better one.
He made the argument that, rather than escaping to Virtual Reality like in most dystopian fictional versions of the future, Niantic believes the future Metaverse should be built on top of the physical world.
He went on to share that the company is making public the Niantic Map, a data rich, extremely detailed map of the world in hopes of spurring AR collaboration.
He summed up their vision stating, "We want to build a better reality. One that we want to live in, that supports the stuff we do as humans, moving, exploring, and being with other people. One that preserves the special place of the real world."
Internet of Things (IOT) 📶
Blackshark.ai Raises $20 Million to Scale Earth Digital Twin
Next up, Blackshark.ai, the company behind Microsoft’s Flight Simulator, just finished a $20 million round A funding to develop and scale its own Earth replica tech.
The company uses satellite imagery and machine learning to extrapolate from imperfect outlines, -creating a plausible 3D reconstruction of the area.
Their goal is to build a live model of the surface of the earth and they've already brought the compute time for updating that model from 1 month to 3 days.
Robotics🤖
Companies Hit Record Robotics Sales
Lastly, companies in nearly every sector are ramping up automation with a record number of Robot orders.
According to the association for advancing automation, overall sales have increased 37% from one year ago.
The surge comes amid the Great Resignation and the ongoing labor struggle.
According to a 2017 report from the McKinsey Global Institute, automation could displace nearly 73 million U.S. Jobs by 2030.