The Exponential technologies are reshaping the ecosystem of the workforce, and the workplace is every day more digital at every level of the organizations. When we give a look and rethink its whole dimension, we can envision new perspectives of opportunities and challenges involved.

When we talk about the future of work, we usually think of robots, machines, human replacement. But that’s the simplistic vision of the future. But some of the more relevant elements for the future of work are the access to information, tools, and collaboration platforms. Is how easy it is to learn a new skill because the online courses give an almost-infinite list of contents. It is also a possibility offered by the state of the hardware and software related. But of course, and I don´t need to confess the bias I have, is the power of Spatial Computing as the convergence of immersive realities and advanced analytics.

Now is the moment where the famous slogan from Xerox PARC is more relevant than ever: “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

But before advancing, let’s go back to remember the industrial revolutions and our moment in history. First, we acquired the experience and the evolutionary conditions to be the humans we are today. Then we developed the capacity to build and establish cognitive artifacts that complement our ability. And finally, we learned how to make cognitive artifacts that bring us the possibility to acquire competencies that we can´t have been just humans. We designed machines, planes and in the last decades we developed computers, and now we are improving our capacity with exponential technologies.

As we can see, this actual moment called the 4th industrial revolution is coming to us as a great opportunity. The new relation between skills requirement, work, and talent is, at the same time, challenging and fascinating. The arts and the science, the technical capacity, and the dreaming capacity are starting to mix. In the end, it is the human tribe building the future of each industry the one that could envision where could we go as a community.

In every industry, we are confronting a need of a lot more hours of training to take advantage of the momentum. But at the same time, we need the training time to keep moving with the velocity of the industries. Automation and the Internet of Things will continue to expand. Renewable technologies should be the new normal, and the development of the sectors is advancing at a high velocity. Studies say that in the next five years, training and re-skilling must push from 60 hours average per year to 101 hours needed. All this means training and workforce development are not any more optional, but a MUST at every level of society.

My bet is the re-skilling of the workforce interacting with computers augmenting our capacities as humans! Spatial Computing is the most natural solution as our brain works in 3-dimensions, and immersive realities are deploying the content and interaction in 3-dimensions. The capacity these XR technologies have to generate useful and actionable analytics will allow us to understand the interaction of humans with their environment. In these terms, spatial computing is the next generation of the Internet of Things. The question should be how the companies can improve their KPI dashboard learning from the teams working in the field thanks to Spatial Computing?

In the bottom level of the workforce that augmentation meaning is essential. We need this group of people to learn quickly to keep their activity/work and knowledge running at the rhythm the society needs. What do I mean? Industries offering services and infrastructure to the cities and humans – like water and sewage, electrical grid maintenance, infrastructure development, manufacturing – have more than 50% of their workforce working in the field. It means they are the foundation of the cities. All these people need to be trained, including recurrent actualizations. And the required technologies for the smart cities implementation are every day advancing and moving in the intersection between digitalization and sustainability.

This entire group of people working in the field could add a lot of knowledge to the decision-makers, to make possible the smart cities in its full dimension. In addition to the areas where simulation adds a lot of value because of the reduction of distance, cost, or risk associated, there are industries where the added value is not in the one-time training. When talking about the bottom level of the workforce, we should care about the volume of people potentially using XR devices for their training and operation. The opportunities in the field are fantastic if we can reduce the distance between assumptions and reality not only with sensors but using the training and operations data to generate insights!

The planet is living a moment where we can’t afford thinking about how we could replace humans by machines. We should be thinking about how we can increase collaboration at every level of society.

5G is starting to operate, and the immersive content running in a spatial computing platform will be usual. From my perspective, for the workforce at the bottom level, this new reality should be the one that could give humanity a future of smart, sustainable, and human cities.

About Blog Writer :

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Rosario B. Casas

Co-founder at VR Americas