While IBM, Microsoft, Google, and other tech giants are racing to create the first viable quantum computer, a startup is on a mission to get rid of computer monitors and the ever-present Post-it notes using augmented reality.
Meron Gribetz, CEO and founder of the tech startup Meta, said that his company plans to make computer monitors and sticky notes non-existent in the office workspace. Instead, users will be using augmented reality glasses which will enable them to make everything around them their virtual workspace.
What Gribetz envisioned seemed like a scene in a science-fiction film. But he and his company is making it possible through the software they aptly called Workspace. The software works with the company's augmented reality headset, Meta 2.
Instead of desktop icons, the software has 'shelves' which the user can grab with their hands to open applications. Through the augmented reality application, users can place their virtual monitors everywhere in the air in front of them. Then, they can use a series of applications simultaneously with just a flick of a finger. They can even move different applications anywhere they want it to.
Aside from desktops, Meta also developed an app version of Workspace and works with smartphones pretty well. That means, mobile users can open their files and display them anywhere they want to.
Another cool feature of the augmented reality headset is it allows users to doodle or write virtual sticky notes on their smartphones and pull it on the space in front of them. Then, they can shove it back into their phones once they're done working on it.
Gribetz said that they are leading the way in making the workspace more virtual by taking all the computer monitors out from their office. Instead, everybody will don the augmented reality glasses. Ryan Pamplin, Meta's vice president, said that almost everyone at Meta are already using them.
Meta's vision of a workspace which you can carry anywhere with you is exciting. Soon, people might find themselves grabbing and flicking the air in front of them even while sitting on a train on their way to work.
