The world of technology always generates questions and great headlines. We have gone from “5G will change our lives” to placing all our hopes, and categorical doubts, in the metaverse. And just at the moment we thought that this would continue to be the topic of the year, ChatGPT arrived to flood front pages all over the world and change the day to day in educational centers.
The reaction of the competitors was not long in coming. In a few days, Bard, Google's ChatGPT, arrived. The company argues that its AI generates more human-like responses because ChatGPT is trained by accessing web pages, while Bard will have greater interaction with users by being able to integrate into any product, for example, in its search engine. We'll see how it goes, but how did we get here?
It is important that we all know that this situation is not strange. The great technological changes always have two phases: first infrastructure is invested and developed, then the services that work with it are created. Thus, after the days of the cable, the antenna and discovering whether or not we have coverage, now, what we have to do is marvel at the potential of everything we have managed to build. And finally enjoy it.
Virtual reality and augmented reality are more real today than ever because we have an infrastructure that really brings us closer to what cinema has been showing us for years. The real and virtual worlds are intermingled with spectacular quality and richness of nuances from the latest generation devices. And this is where the next challenge we have to face appears: the hybridization of worlds.
When talking about hybridization, technologists will tend to think of generating a web 3.0 with a common standard or, at least, with virtual and augmented reality environments that are interoperable. But we, at Mobile World Capital Barcelona, also like to contemplate the mix between the physical and digital worlds, that is, the creation of immersive worlds that blend with the physical world. We call it figital –phygital in English–, or what is the same, the union of the words physical and digital. It opens up a range of surprising experiences that start from the innovative combination of technologies that are within our reach to generate opportunities and find different solutions. With a clear objective: that the physical and digital worlds do not go separately. And it is now, in the middle of 2023, when we will begin to see that breaking these barriers is possible.
At this MWC we will not only see how an avatar can jump from one world to another, but we will also live unique sensory experiences that directly link what we do in the digital world with what we feel in the physical world. We will enrich our experiential field because our five senses will be physical and digital and our perception of reality will be different from the usual one. We have managed to create a very personal, even intimate, fictional world that each individual will be able to experience among thousands and thousands of people.
As you can see, we are touching the future from everyday life, from our most primary senses. From the internet of things we move to the internet of the senses. A revolution that, beyond the playful, opens a field of indisputable business opportunities for startups, companies and all kinds of sectors. With these advances, this new reality can become the engine of a competitive and resilient production model that adapts to the hectic pace of innovation.
And the best of all this is that from MWCapital we have the opportunity to think and design how we want these solutions to be that will mark the development of a more ethical, inclusive and sustainable digital society. This is how we want to imagine our future.
When in doubt, I want to clarify that these words have not been written by any artificial intelligence. Excuse me if there are errors, which, as you well know, errare humanum est.
