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Cristiano Amon paints the future of office work as an adventure in alternative universes. As CEO of Qualcomm, the $33-billion chip company that led the creation of 5G, Amon is working with gadget-builders to create that future.
Recently, Washington Post reporter Danielle Abrill talked with Amon about how tomorrow’s workers will get their jobs done.
First, Amon said, new technology will erase the distance, and difference, between working remotely and being in a central office.
Enhancements to computers and screens will enable people away from the office to project holograms of themselves into meetings, including one-on-one sessions, to capture the sense of immediacy and physical presence that Zoom can’t.
More of those encounters will take place in the metaverse, creating a common space for people to be together rather than looking at a computer screen divided up into various boxes.
Visiting the metaverse will require “smart glasses.” Today, those “glasses” more closely resemble a snorkeling mask. However, within three years, they actually will be as small and light as a pair of eyeglasses, Amon says.
With those same smart glasses, you’ll be able to walk into a room and have the glasses tell you who in the room you have friends or connections in common with, and, if you choose, connect to the social media networks of anyone—or everyone—who’s there.
All of this will require all devices to be connected to each other through the Internet of Things and use 5G technology for virtually instant communication.
The key question is “how can we build technology that allows people to remain productive wherever they are, not only having access to devices and in the cloud but having the ability to do that at a very high speed,” Amon said.
TRENDPOST: As we’ve seen with all new technologies, implementation is less glorious than the vision. Not all people adapt to technological groundshifts at 5G speeds.
There will be bumps and glitches as today’s workers figure out hologram technology and glasses that let you pull information from the cloud, including personal details about someone you’ve just met.
Some people won’t be able to adapt, just as some who grew up using typewriters could never make a workable transfer to computers.
Others will object to the omnipresence of 5G, the health dangers of which are increasingly well-documented, as we have noted in articles such as “The 5G Gamble” (21 Nov 2018) and “Switzerland Suspends 5G Deployment” (25 Feb 2020).
Most workers will make their own compromises to survive in a world where everything happens at 5G’s instant speeds, information overload is a moment-by-moment challenge to be met, and privacy is a quaint memory.