“Third Thumb” Augmentation Changes the Way we Think of Prosthetics
Present Day
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And yet, how we convey said beauty to the rest of the world has been a topic of interest and controversy over the last several decades. Do we promote it over billboards and on magazine covers or do we allow individuals to express it themselves via social media platforms like YouTube?
For tech. company ModiFace, the answer is easy: live stream it using augmented reality (AR)! If you kept up with our reports on ModiFace’s growth as a company over the years, you’d have likely expected this move for some time now. Today, the company is launching a live streaming application service that will harness their beauty AR technology for users on Facebook, YouTube, and even Skype.
Whether you’re a private makeup artist or a brand, you’ll be able to broadcast live demonstrations of you applying virtual makeup onto your physical face in real-time. Just browse through the selection of makeup available, click whatever one you prefer, and presto – your face becomes instantaneously augmented to your own beauty preference. ModiFace will be making this available to all of their AR beauty partners, starting with Sephora using the already established Sephora Virtual Artist application.
Near Future
Five to ten years from now, whether you’re Skyping with a loved one or taking part in a video conference, you’ll no longer have to worry about making yourself look presentable. Simply open up your AR beauty application, select your preferred look, and begin the online call. Whether it’s makeup or a little bit of virtual nip and tuck, your entire virtual presence will be augmented to your own liking.
Nearing the ten-year mark, there will be a noticeable difference between your offline persona and your online persona. Whether or not this results in any negative consequences is yet to be seen, but it’s an application that is fast approaching popularity, given the already increasingly popular AR filters found on apps like Snapchat.
“Live streaming is the perfect next step for ModiFace live video AR technology. Brands can now leverage this capability to reach the billions of users who are actively engaged on Facebook and YouTube. In the next few months, we will be adding support for additional live streaming platforms and technologies.”
– Jennifer Tidy, Vice President of Partnerships
FAR FUTURE
Thirty to fifty years from now, your offline persona and online persona will have blurred to such a significant extent that there won’t even be a perceivable difference between the two. This would be the introduction of mixed reality beauty. You’ll no longer be confined to applying virtual augmentations of your physical self using only digital devices; by this time, you’ll be able to virtually augment yourself in real-time within your own physical space.
How you look in the offline world will be predicated on you wish your virtual avatar self to appear. There will be no difference between what is physical and what is virtual. Our sense of reality will be a little bit of both worlds – a true mixed reality!
Photo Credit: ModiFace
About the author
B.J. Murphy is the Editor and Social Media Manager of Serious Wonder. He is a futurist, philosopher, activist, author and poet. B.J. is an Affiliate Scholar for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET) and an Ambassador for the robotics company Humai.
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