21 May Becoming Digital: An Online Guide to Modern Digital Advancements
A keyboard takes input from a user to exact a desired outcome. The origin of this interaction goes way back to the ancient abacus. In this case, a MicroAI writer uses a keyboard to produce a series of pixels on a monitor which resembles letters. This develops into a string of words and from these words, meaning is derived.
By 2018, there are many bold technological developments. These developments can surprise even the smartest of developers by giving valuable insights and analytics. We are no longer at the early years of the computer age and the capacity of the digital world has transcended basic tasks.
Engineers, developers, architects, data scientists, executives, and more, can now learn from the evolving digital world, enabled by AI and IoT. The main areas of digital advancements we will explore are Digital Twin, Smart Chat Technology, Cloud Edge Computing, and Reality Immersion. Let us look at how these topics are now shaping the physical world – much like how the physical world has shaped its digital counterpart.
As a disclaimer: While there are many other impactful digital advancements, these are the digital advancements that has interesting interaction with the physical world.
Digital Twin
What exactly is a digital twin? Simply put, it is a digital replicate or model of a real-world subject. What makes a digital twin so important is that it allows for accurate analysis of real-world objects, services, and procedures, in different and non-invasive ways.
So how does digital twin technology impact the physical world?
- Devices connected with sensors feed valuable real-time data.
- Allows for predictive analysis of costly errors and malfunctions.
- Applies a “see it before you build it” methodology.
- Run large quantities of realistic simulations and obtain valuable data to course-correct real-life projects.
- Thinking beyond capital goods, digital twins can aggregate consumer data to orchestrate better go-to-market strategies for many verticals.
- Large-scale applications include but are not limited to:
- Power plants
- Oil refineries
- Gas refineries
- Jet engines
- Auto-insurance
Smart Chat Technology
From Amazon’s Alexa to Apple’s Siri, there has been a meteoric rise in smart chatbots. With a surging demand for better and more intelligent virtual assistants, enterprises are responding with a push in developments of advanced conversational platforms.
So, what can you hope to get out of future AI chat experiences?
- Better personalized conversations.
- As we all know, customer service can go a long way in building an enterprise. This is improved by having a more personalized AI chatbot at your customers’ service.
- “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite understand you. Did you mean ___?”
- Thought it’s understandable that chatbots are still far from perfection, it can be irritable when their suggestions don’t quite hit the mark.
- Better chatbots that answers common questions with ease can make the user experience more seamless.
- 24/7 service assistance.
- Improving organization for your personal life or your business life – all hands-free!
Cloud Edge Computing
Cloud Edge Computing takes sections of data that is deemed valuable and stores it to the cloud. Usually, the cloud captures a lot of data – even seemingly useless data. Edge computing differs by funneling useful data through implementation of a cloud edge gateway, acting as a checkpoint between that which collects information and the cloud itself.
Here are the benefits to Cloud Edge computing:
- Lower bandwidth costs
- Extraction of useful data – disregards minute data
- Data analyzation before storage instead of after storage, causing more meaningful data selection.
- Live data funnel
- Uses wide ranging technologies:
- Wireless sensor networks
- Mobile data acquisition
- Remote cloud services
- Distributed data storage
Reality Immersion
Painting an immersive reality requires broader strokes than just that of virtual reality. The subcategories of reality immersion include:
- AR (Augmented Reality)
- VR (Virtual Reality)
- 360 Degree videos or photos
- CG VR (Computer-generated VR)
- MR (Mixed Reality)
With many big names (Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft) investing and developing exciting roadmaps for reality immersion, let us focus more on the impacts of this disruptive technology on our physical world:
- Enhancement of sales experience through virtual tours.
- Helping engineers, developers, and designers tinkle with their creations before they are built.
- Integration of VR and other visual properties with real estate to benefit home improvements and architecture.
- Providing an accurate training simulator for workers of all verticals (healthcare, retail, law enforcement, etc).
- Saving space by using AR to better organize your work-space.
