AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform—Call It Mirrorworld

every place and thing in the real world—every street, lamppost, building, and room—will have its full-size digital twin in the mirrorworld... the next great digital platform...We will interact with it, manipulate it, and experience it like we do the real world... Eventually we’ll be able to search physical space as we might search a text... hyperlink objects into a network of the physical ... all things and places will be machine-­readable, subject to the power of algorithms....
Microsoft’s vision for the HoloLens is simple: It’s the office of the future. Wherever you are, you can insert as many of your screens as you want and work from there... you are likely to put on AR glasses at work long before you put them on at home....
“We want you to shop for your home, from your home,” ... When shoppers try such a service at home, they are “11 times more likely to buy,” ... “moving the internet off screens into the real world.”...
tiny embedded cameras ... map what they see... artificial intelligence... will make sense of those pixels... SLAM—simultaneous localization and mapping... the connections will be contextual, generated by AIs.... you need to have a planet full of cameras that are always on.... We’ll have a type of x-ray vision able to see into objects via their virtual ghosts, exploding them into constituent parts, able to untangle their circuits... Robots will see this world... both seeing for itself and providing a scan for other robots...
virtual bots will become embodied... objects can be dual use... We can pick up a pencil and use it as a magic wand... Time is a dimension in the mirror­world that can be adjusted... you will be able to scroll back... in time, at any location, and see what came before....the mirrorworld will affect us all at a deeply personal level... severe physiological and psychological effects...
to synchronize the virtual ... with the real ... while rendering it visible to millions—will require tracking people and things to a degree that can only be called a total surveillance state.