The Fourth Transformation

How Augmented Reality & Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything

By: Robert Scoble, Shel Israel

Narrated by: Jeffrey Kafer

Ten years from today, the center of our digital lives will no longer be the smart phone, but device that looks like ordinary eyeglasses: except those glasses will have settings for virtual and augmented reality. What you really see and what is computer generated will be mixed so tightly together, that we won't really be able to tell what is real and what is illusion.

Instead of touching and sliding on a mobile phone, we will make things happen by moving our eyes or by brainwaves. When we talk with someone or play an online game, we will see that person in the same room with us. We will be able to touch and feel her or him through haptic technology.

We won't need to search online with words, because there will be a new Visual Web 100 times larger than the current Internet, and we will find things by images, buy things by brands, or just by looking at a logo on the jacket of a passerby. Language will be irrelevant, and a merchant in a developing world will have access to global markets.

Medical devices will cure schizophrenia, allow quadriplegics to walk. People will be able to touch and feel objects and other people who are not actually there for conversations, games and perhaps intimate experiences.

From kindergarten to on-the-job, learning will become experiential. Children will visit great battlefields and tour historic places in VR rather than read about them in text books. Med students and surgeons will learn and practice on virtual humans rather than cadavers; oil rig workers will understand how to handle emergencies, before the ever leave the home office.

The Fourth Transformation is based on two years of research and about 400 interviews with technologists and business decision makers. It explains the technology and product landscape on a level designed to be interesting and useful to business thinkers and general audiences. Mostly it talks about how VR and AR are already being used, or will be used in the next one-to-three years.

©2016 Robert Scoble and Shel Israel (P)2016 Robert Scoble and Shel Israel

See the future.

Loved this book. The authors have done great research and made a excellent case that VR, AR, AI, will be as normal as mobile phones are today.

thought provoking

Good thought provoking book for the next wave that's coming. The authors did a thourough job of explaining the driving forces for the next wave of technology.

Eye opening

Reading "The Fourth Transformation" was a delight. The Authors take the reader through a journey from the recently possible in AR, VR and MR to a plausible future that I up until reading this book thought was much further away. The book has raised my awareness to the field and will help me prepare for the future.

Technology is our future, and there it always new

Would you listen to The Fourth Transformation again? Why?

no, I will lern from this book to deepen my knowledge in this fabulous area. you never cross the same audio book twice. I will see the next one in VR

What did you like best about this story?

the amazing facts and trends about VR

Which character – as performed by Jeffrey Kafer – was your favorite?

the overall story. The new horizon it opened for me

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

movie is passe, VR is the furure

Any additional comments?

very educative book even for non computer geeks

Thought provoking and inspiring

I know there has been a lot of hype about technologies that never took off. 3D televisions and virtual reality headsets are just two recent examples. However, in this book the authors convincingly explain why Augmented Reality (AR) is different and how it is likely to evolve much faster than most people think possible.

I have quoted from and recommended this book in several tech blogs I participate in. The authors give concrete examples of the practical applications of AR beyond gaming and surfing the Internet. The transformation from our current "heads down, hands full" cell phone world to a "heads up, hands free" world of stylish AR headsets will impact everything from how we work to how we communicate to how shop.

Like it or not, ready or not, the fourth transformation is on its way!