| > once cellular networks allow you to stream high-definition VR content and upload data at the same rate, it seems like there's nothing more that additional bandwidth could add. Well there is this famous quote "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." from 1943 and it turned out to be very wrong. "High-definition VR content" isn't the same as "indistinguishable from reality". When movies were first introduced to theaters, with small frames per second rates, without color and without any sound on the medium itself, people were quite stunned and e.g. took cover when a the movie showed a train approaching at high speeds. Nowadays it seems primitive to us from a technological standpoint. There is a trend that some people don't accept lossy audio encoding. Maybe one day, videos will get a same trend and people want lossless videos, in full 360 degree VR, intensity resolution beyond perceptual limits and constantly high enough angular resolution for your eyes to foveate any area of the screen and see no pixels. That's quite a huge amount of data to transmit. Add in buffering so that you can seek, etc. As for genuinely new forms of media, I could think of some: full-body experiences with feeling of touch, smell, etc either live or recorded possibly professional in a studio or just you sharing your last vacation to venice. Taking it further: uploading your consciousness to a body which is a large distance away, making physical travel of humans mostly obsolete: Maybe one day we can represent the brains of human individuals as data and send it with light speed around the earth and throughout space. |