A hypothetical product journey
(To be taken with a large pinch of salt and a sprinkling of foreboding).
Some time ago, I tweeted about the issue of brand loyalty using an often used science fiction technology as a talking point. It went like this:
If you think brand loyalty is essential for the take up of wearable technology, imagine how important it will be for implantables!
Jon Ayre
No doubt, you’ve seen at least one film where people are augmented with a variety of implants. Devices that allow them to interact with the world and each other seamlessly, free from the constraints of smart phones and laptops. At the same time, we challenge the idea that people would be willing to have such implants. The leap from purchased product to surgical intervention is simply too huge to envisage.
However, there are already augmented humans in our midst. Some are benefitting from implantable technology used to restore lost senses, such as hearing and even sight, and some are regaining control of their immediate surroundings. The positive aspects of these advances are clear and worth celebrating. Some people are experimenting with augmentation purely out of curiosity and some are doing so in the name of artistic exploration.
Current uses, and possible future advances got me thinking about what such a technology might do, and what it would take for a company to introduce it to the market. How far could it go, given the invasive and potentially permanent nature of the devices involved.
This blog post summarises my thoughts. It’s purely hypothetical, but it’s also a thought experiment that has relevance to how products move from strangely incongruous to familiarly essential.
From little acorns
A good way to introduce radical transformation into the lives of change averse humans is in small, imperceptible but beneficial steps. No single change is particularly disruptive, and no step is too unfamiliar to understand. However, even small changes are difficult to introduce, and so we need to find an audience receptive to that change. This audience is typically the young and/or the adventurous. So, as for many emerging technologies, our target audience might be teenagers.
We then need a single, incremental change that can be made to their existing lives that will provide benefit and at the same time make the greater changes we intend to make more palatable. We need to identify the key feature that will attract that audience; the itch that needs scratching.
For our thought experiment, let’s consider a large corporation that has just purchased a trendy brand of headphones, and sees this as the channel for introducing implantables onto the market. Imagine that this corporation has prototyped a miniaturised device that vibrates when exposed to an external signal (e.g. from a smartphone), and that this device is suitable for insertion under the skin near the eardrum. Now let’s assume that the insertion of that device is simple and safe enough to be undertaken at a reputable ear-piercing establishment or tattoo parlour. For purposes of brevity let’s call these devices “Beatbuds”.
Now, imagine I’m a teenager and I want to listen to my music in an unobtrusive way, and perhaps even surreptitiously at home or in college. I might consider adopting these Beatbuds as my headphone of choice – after all, they’re not really implantables. They just go under the skin. I’m planning to get a piercing anyway, so why not?
One step leads to another
So now we have a group of customers able to listen to their music without wires, and without any external appendages. They can even use their Beatbuds to listen to phone conversations, but of course they then annoyingly have to hold the phone up to speak into it. Imagine how much easier it would be if that same ear-piercing establishment could insert a similar device under the skin of the neck close to the voice box. Of course, if they’ve already had the first implant they’re not going to hesitate to have this device added, as it completes the ensemble.
Now they can use their audio devices completely hands free. Voice can be used to control the device, have proper conversations with friends and even create short text updates such as Tweets. With practice they can even use voice to create longer pieces of text.
These are the first mass market augmented humans, and all we’ve done is put a few innocuous devices under the skin.
But, voice input for commands is clumsy and intrusive, especially in a noisy environment or when I want to keep my communication to myself. Wouldn’t a few of those passive microphones also act as touch sensors? After all, that’s why we have fingerprints. Those grooves ensure that when we hold something, or run our fingers over a rough surface, the resulting vibrations create a sense of touch and movement. It’s not too big a leap to adapt that microphone technology to provide touch sensors.
Can I have one in each finger, please, and could you then create a touch based interface into my smartphone so that I can use my hands to create messages and control what happens without actually touching the screen. And, while you’re at it, that smartphone of mine has no microphone or speakers now so there should be room for more battery and processing power. What’s more, if my fingers are touch sensitive any surface will do and the screen no longer needs to be touch sensitive. It could just be projected onto any surface.
Better still, maybe those finger implants could have basic accelerometer capability so gestures in the air can also be used, and if we reuse the Beatbud technology they could also vibrate to give us a form of force feedback when we touch a virtual surface as well as a real surface.
See what I mean?
Our customer base is now bought into the implantable model, and we’re creating a full implantable eco-system that they’re not only comfortable with, but are rapidly becoming dependent upon.
Now, if you could integrate a head-up display that would complete the picture wouldn’t it? But let’s not do the glasses thing again. It’s all about direct augmentation now and with displays built into contact lenses, and that optic nerve implant just around the corner, the experience is almost complete.
Imagine how great it would be if you could not only hear, speak and touch without devices. Imagine if you could see a virtual world overlaid on the real world creating a much richer and more natural experience. Now turn that lens or implant into a camera so it can see what you see. Now, when you’re talking to someone, you can sit in front of a mirror and they can talk directly to your reflection as if you were sitting opposite. You can have a face to face meeting without resorting to any video conferencing equipment.
The speed of thought
And now for the pièce de résistance. Those little implantable sensors have another use. Coupled with some well trained neural networks, those devices, planted beneath the scalp, can interpret your carefully formed thoughts. So forget the throat mic – you can now simply think of the words and commands. You can communicate silently with your fellow augmented humans and you can search for information and see the results, projected ghostlike before your eyes.
No need to remember speeches, or appear ignorant in meetings. No need to use a clumsy keyboard to write your blog post or reply to your boss’s urgent email. You’re always on and always ready.
This might excite you, or more likely, it might sound like a frightening dystopian future vision, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. The necessary technology is slowly emerging, and I’ve postulated one possible product adoption roadmap with an early adopter audience.
So, let’s consider what the implications might be. The augmented human will have access to real time information instantly, without needing to access an external device. They’ll be able to communicate with one another silently, and at a distance, and they’ll be able to share visual input with one another. They’ll have an advantage in the workplace over the “natural” human and there might even be tasks incorporated into working life that are fundamentally dependent on augmentation (much as the ability to use modern technology is essential to many professions right now).
This technology won’t be cheap, and it certainly won’t be something that many people want to consider, but there may come a day where “level of augmentation” appears on the job application.
And you thought AI was the real threat?