What will happen when bandwidths are very high!

A question very important is what will happen in the world when bandwidths become very high. Initially there was GSM call and DSL, then came 3g and fibre and now there are higher bandwidth fibre and 4g. There is 3g/4g and Wifi based fibre broadband in most places now.

To track the effects of bandwidths we can take a back to basics approach. It is that humans have eyes and ears. So it boils down to sight and speech. Therefore we can say that very high bandwidths like 100 Mbps in telecom and 1 Gbps on Wifi broadband will result in better things we can see, we can hear and talk to.

I feel 3D VR, AR and 4k, 8k video covers sight. In terms of speech and sound I feel voice operated devices and devices speaking interactively will become possible. Like Alexa, Siri and Hey Google.

Humans are limited in terms of seeing and hearing. Perhaps touching and neurological signals can be included but for now the eyes and ears are the primary interfaces that humans use to interact with technology.

Lets now take it further. With greater bandwidth and greater processing comes greater life-like responses from computers. So we there could be voice assistants assisting humans with all sorts of productive capabilities. Imagine you have a secretary and you can ask them to do stuff. Imagine now that there is a computer that is processor and bandwidth supported making it equivalent to a secretary and even more efficient. If one wants to schedule a taxi ask the device secretary, if one wants to schedule a flight ask the device secretary, if one wants to buy grocery ask the device secretary, if one wants to order something ask the device secretary. These are being called Virtual Assistants (Gartner predicts that, by 2025, 50% of knowledge workers will use a virtual assistant on a daily basis, up from 2% in 2019). So everyone will have a mini secretary in their smartphones and people who want to pay more will perhaps have sophisticated virtual assistants.

That’s ears, voice and speech.

Lets discuss eyes and sight. With greater bandwidth and greater processing comes the ability to show 3D life-like views to people (if they wear a headset and enter that domain). So perhaps a 3D camera will take in a 3D view of a meeting room and given sufficient bandwidth it will transfer that 3D view to another place. Someone wearing a headset can see a 3D view of any place and will really feel like he is there. Voice can be part of the transfer so people could wear a headset and be seeing and hearing a 3D view of a far of place. Instead of a 2D video call it’ll be a 3D view call. This makes way for new avenues in human interaction. So imagine an MIT classroom having a 3D camera and anyone in the world attending the class in 3D view via a headset. It will feel very much like a real class attendance and will definitely help learning. I think it will make a much better learning experience than the 2D video one because of its feel and presence effect. Its easy to get distracted into something other than what you are seeing on your 2D screen but a 3D view would be immersive learning. This is being called immersive learning and experiential training because it is immersive in experience and is not just sight but is an experience.

Enter The Matrix. You wear a headset and someone else wears a headset and they could be in a 3D virtual world together. Lets not make them fight here on the blog but two people being together in 3D view is a very real possibility given sufficient bandwidth and processing.

So now lets break this down. Consider a 3D live transmission and people attending in 3D view that live transmission. As in an MIT Class which people across the world attending in 3D view LIVE. Now separately consider non-live transmission. A virtual 3D world which 2 or more people are present in together which is a recorded experience. For example a recorded Safari trip which is not live but people jointly attend it. Now separately consider a computer generated 3D world in which there is a virtual assistant like a device secretary present as well. Someone wearing a headset is taken to a computer generated 3D virtual world where they are with a virtual assistant, are talking to them and learning from them etc. Now further consider 2 or more people being in a computer generated 3D world together and there being a virtual assistant present in that world as well which they can speak to. Interesting possibilities.

These are real possibilities given sufficient bandwidth and processing. I feel 5G and Wifi 6 causing bandwidth increase can result in these. Simultaneously edge computing and cloud computing causing increased processing can bring these things to life. These seem like real possibilities and things are progressing in this direction.