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Tech

Facebook CEO: AR Goggles to Replace Phones, Telepathy's Next

By Mark Spoonauer Tom's Guide
Published | Updated

Within the next decade, the smartphone in your pocket will take a back seat to the augmented-reality or virtual-reality glasses on your face. That's according to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who hosted a Q&A yesterday (June 30) on a wide range of subjects. After VR, Zuckerberg predicts, the next frontier will be high-tech telepathy.

Here's part of Zuckerberg's answer to a question on how he envisions the world in 10 years' time:

VR and augmented reality (AR) are really just getting off the ground now, with Facebook-owned Oculus VR scheduled to debut its Oculus Rift headset in 2016. In the short term, the technology will mostly be used to deliver immersive, 360-degree games. However, as Samsung has already demonstrated with its Oculus-powered Gear VR headset, everything from concerts and virtual tours to sporting events will be experienced in a whole new way.

MORE: Microsoft's HoloLens Leapfrogs Apple in Innovation

According to research firm CCS Insight, augmented and virtual reality will become a $4 billion market by 2018, with sales of VR devices increasing from 2.2 million units this year to 20 million. The report also predicts that sales of AR devices, such as Microsoft's HoloLens, will grow from 300,000 units this year to 4 million by 2018. As a quick refresher, virtual reality is a fully immersive experience that places the user into a different environment, while augmented reality adds a digital overlay to your live view of the world around you.

It's clear that Zuckerberg didn't invest $2 billion in Oculus just to transform entertainment. That's just the first step. At the time of the acquisition in March, he wrote about making "Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a courtside seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students from all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face - just by putting on goggles in your home."

In other words, to Zuckerberg, VR and AR represent a whole new way to communicate, one that will be powered by phones when we're on the go. If most of us do wind up donning VR and AR glasses - despite the Google Glass debacle - our phones will become more like personal servers and will be used less frequently and directly over time.

However, Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight, doesn't believe that the smartphone will be relegated to second-class status anytime soon.

Zuckerberg is also thinking about what's after AR and VR -- sharing our thoughts directly via tech.

It seems pretty sci-fi, but researchers have had some early success with basic brain-to-brain communication experiments, such as the one conducted by both Starlab Barcelona, in Spain, and Axilum Robotics, in Strasbourg, France. So don't be surprised if your VR headset in 2020 comes with electrodes that go on your scalp to measure your cortex's activity.

Mark Spoonauer is the editor in chief of Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag. Follow him at @mspoonauer. Follow Tom's Guide at @tomsguide, on Facebook and on Google+.