[shostack]

Funny you mention that. Was just thinking about the book "Rainbow's End." In the near future, it had most people interacting with tactile "muscle-movement" based input, and contact lens displays.

Wearables/wetwear are almost certainly going to be the future at some point. Our grandchildren will laugh when we tell them about having to hold a device in your hand with a tiny screen where you hunt and peck at an even tinier keyboard with your thumb.

Of course we also won't be used to being bombarded with the inevitable massive, vision-filling AR ads that will come.

[shpx]

I might sound like I'm joking, but as soon as I get an AR headset I'm building a computer vision system to detect billboards and overlaying a black rectangle over top. It's already possible to fill in items of a given class in images with deep learning, and it'll only get better.

[shostack]

Agreed. I personally can't wait for the inevitable ad blocking war that ensues.

Unfortunately, if I had to posit a guess, it would be that the main "application space" for AR won't be the free and open web. It will be the walled garden appstore(s). You'll have your staple apps, but they will all be self-contained, and the owners of the hardware/OS will have strict controls around the ability to do things like, block ads from their ad network (which might be the only one allowed on the device).

Big tech companies don't like the users being able to control what they see through a browser that can install whatever plugins the user wants. Make no mistake, they want full control over the experience, and have no qualms about doing whatever it takes to own that experience. To not do so enables their competitors to claim a foothold in their territory.