Robert Scoble - The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything

About the Authors

Robert Scoble and Shel Israel have been researching, writing and speaking about technologys impact on the near-term future together and separately since 2005. They are best known for two critically acclaimed, best-selling tech business books: Naked Conversations (2006) , which demonstrated the business opportunities for social media, and Age of Context (2012) , which explained how the convergence of mobile, social media, IoT, data and location technologies would forever change the relationships between businesses and their customers.

Robert Scoble is entrepreneur in residence at UploadVR and among the worlds best-known online tech journalists. He is recognized globally as an early spotter of important technology patterns and trends and is among the worlds most popular tech speakers.

Shel Israel has written six previous books and has contributed to Forbes , Fast Company and Businessweek . He has been a keynote speaker at business and tech conferences on all continents not covered by ice.

Together, Scoble and Israel will continue to work together helping businesses find their way into and through the Fourth Transformation now starting.

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Additional thanks to Bram Kool as an individual contributor.

Foreword: No Nevers

W hen I give speeches, I often ask, Do you remember when you said never? When you said youd never blog, never use Facebook, or never use Snapchat?

Well, now the new never is, Ill never use augmented reality glasses, or Ill never use virtual reality.

Ive built my business and reputation on never listening to the nevers. As you may know, I grew my familys wine store into a $60 million business and later built a digital agency with hundreds of employees, servicing some of the largest brands in the worldin part by jumping into new technologies that the market was undervaluing or simply not paying attention to.

The next waves of nevers are starting to emerge: virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)and their cousin, mixed reality (MR).

In this book, my friends Robert Scoble and Shel Israel take you into how these nevers might affect your business. And lets get to the point: As of this writing, September 2016, you might already have a lot of opinions about this new virtual and wearable technology, including thinking it is too bulky, ugly, and dorky, while also being too expensive and not doing enough for you to be interested in using it.

But if you take the same approach that most of my audience did with social media (i.e., try to ignore the new form of communication and technology), you might not only miss huge learnings and opportunities to see how customers are shifting their behavior, but it might just put you out of business.

Why?

MR glasses are on their way to changing literally every part of human life. Pokemon Go was a huge wake up call. Thats just an early taste of how augmented reality will change human life forever. It got people out in the streets looking for virtual characters.

And mixed reality will only add to this shift, as youll be wearing glasses that will show you all sorts of amazing things layered on top of your everyday life. Already some of the tech in the market lets you work on virtual monitors, play with virtual holograms, and even entertain yourself with new kinds of volumetric entertainment.

True, Im not yet wearing mixed reality glasses around town, but you wont find me saying never, so much as some day soon. Ive built my businesses by being early on social networks and platforms. I already see the potential value these new technologies will bring over the next decade. Ill be watching closely, and, if this tech is as big as Scoble and Israel are predicting, then you can bet Ill jump in big time.

Anyone who hasnt paid attention to Mark Zuckerberg spending billions to acquire Oculus Rift or Apples many purchases of augmented reality-focused companies is doing themselves a disservice. If youre in a position to get your hands on a VR headset, then you should, if only to get a taste for its current applications and its possible future implications. This technology is likely to change the media industry as we know it, including news, sports, movies, music, gaming and adult entertainment.

Outside of the gaming and entertainment components of VR/AR, whats even more telling is how corporations are utilizing its capabilities. Caterpillar is using augmented reality to train workers on how to properly maintain its tractors. Ford is using VR to design cars. Sephora has virtual lipstick and eyeliner that you try on your own face using your mobile phone. These are just some of the vast number of examples covered in this book.

Just talk to any of your friends who are on Snapchat about how fun its AR tech is. Not only can you barf rainbows with your friends, but the technology has also become a cool and lucrative opportunity for marketers.