Silicon Valley Developing Augmented Reality Tech Based on Sci-Fi Film

Artificial reality could enslave the human race.

Over 2,000 years ago, Plato envisioned a prison in which individuals were kept chained in a cave. They had nothing but a wall to stare at which puppeteers projected shadows onto.

As reported by Fast Company, Silicon Valley is developing augmented reality technology based on a 2012 science fiction film called Sight.

Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo, the film’s creators, have been working for several years with a Silicon Valley based firm. As Fast Company reports:

For three years, the two found their footing as the in-house concept studio for Silicon Valley-based Meta, a burgeoning AR firm that was building its own headset.

“While we were working at Meta, [the company] developed AR guidelines. Some of them were actually based on Sight,” Lazo says.

Last year, Amazon’s “digital assistant” Alexa was incorporated into augmented reality glasses by Vuzix Corp.

In an advanced form of Plato’s cave, augmented reality involves digital information about real physical locations, products, and people displayed on various devices.

The technology is part of a trend among tech giants to introduce the idea of a heads-up display method of interacting with the digital world, with contact lenses and brain chips the inevitable end goal. Hollywood films and video games have pushed this concept on the public for many years now.

Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook are all heavily investing in and developing products that will plunge users into a new “augmented” reality that is superimposed over our real world.

Controversial 5G technology will enable the connectivity and bandwidth for these wireless devices, which will be connected to the “Internet of Things”.