The World Is Not (Going To Be) Flat

Too many of us have come to believe that the world is flat.  No, I'm not talking about the Flat Earth Society or the random celebrities who purport to believe it is (although both are troubling).  I'm talking about the rest of us, who increasingly see the world through the prism of our various screens, be they smartphones, computer screens, or TVs.  Americans admit to almost 11 hours of screen time daily, and one has to suspect that is understated.

That's going to change.  Soon.  And digital cinema camera maker RED may be showing us how with its new Hydrogen One smartphone.

In a partnership with Leia Inc., an HP spin-off, RED announced the Hydrogen One, which it claims is "the world's first lightfield "holographic" smartphone."  It is expected to be on the market in the first half of 2018, and will retail for $1,200 ($1,600 for the titanium version).  

Their press release says: "The Hydrogen program will feature stunning holographic content and 3D sound for movie viewing, interactive gaming, social messaging and mixed reality."  That's all very nice, but it is the holographic display that has people's attention (well, that and the price).

RED's background has been in cameras, aiming to "build the world's best cameras," which began with 2007's RED ONE, a breakthrough 4D digital camera (they now claim products with "8k resolution").  Leia has similarly grand ambitions, stating that:

Our proprietary Diffractive Lightfield Backlighting (DLB™) solution adds nanostructures to a conventional display and gives them almost magical properties while preserving their standard imaging capabilities.

Got that?  A 2015 Leia video helps illustrate their display:

OK, so it's not quite like the holograms we expect from science fiction television shows and movies, and content is going to be an issue for some time, but it is at least a break from the flat screens we're used to, even with 3D renderings in 2D.  And they're not alone.

Apple, for example, has filed a patent application for "interactive three-dimensional display system," according to CB Insights.  Holus has a Kickstarter campaign for its "interactive tabletop holographic display." while Holoxica claims "several generations of holographic technologies, which span from static images to motion video displays with interaction."

There are published papers in Nature and Optics Express that promise, respectively, "Holographic displays generate realistic 3D images that can be viewed without the need for any visual aids" and a "360-degree tabletop electronic holographic display."

Writing for NPR last month, Glenn McDonald asserted that for true holographic displays, we're not quite there yet, but "we're getting awfully close, though."  He cites a laser display from the University of Rochester and a laser-plasma approach from Aerial Burton as examples.  Other versions are still, he believes, more like optical illusions of "genuine" holograms.

If we only think we're seeing a hologram, does it really matter, as long as we do see them?

The point is, holographic displays are not only feasible with existing technology, but are starting to be commercialized.  RED may have gotten a jump on the market, and may be early in what the experience can yet deliver, but its state-of-the-art will not remain the state-of-the-art very long, nor will they be the only ones.

There will be some fast followers, and they will, indeed, follow fast.

It won't just be about smartphones.  Anything that uses a screen could be augmented, or replaced, by a holographic image.  I've written before about the coming world of "ubiquitous computing," where your device could be just about anything and your display show up anywhere you desire.

You may not care about a holographic display of text, for example, but you might about images, especially if they are interactive.

Entertainment and gaming, of course, are two industries where holographic displays should find early uptake.  Health care, on the other hand, is rarely a fast follower of new technology, but the industry needs to be thinking about the possibilities.

Health care is about people, but it is full of words and data.  Your medical chart is full of words you don't know, drugs you can't even pronounce, numbers that have no obvious meaning.  Health educators do their best to come up with illustrations, simplified explanations, videos, and visual aids, but most of us have health literacy levels well below our general literacy.

Even health professionals struggle to take in all the information, and that problem will grow exponentially as that data does, such as through sensors in wearables and elsewhere.  We need more pictures, and some of those pictures should be holograms.

Picture a hospital room, with the poor patient hooked up to various monitors (all beeping away constantly).  A doctor or nurse coming into the room has to look at the screens and try to make sense of what they are saying about the patient's health.  They may be very good at it, from years of practice, but perhaps it doesn't have to be so hard.

A holographic display -- perhaps of the patient, or trend lines -- could help more easily illustrate problem areas or indicators that are trending in the wrong direction.  It doesn't have to be holographic, of course; it's just that we are visual beings.  A holographic image might make the situation more real and the comprehension faster.

I long for the EHR that is based on holographic displays, allowing the clinician to not only visualize a patient's history and current status but also interactively annotate them.  The display could also be much easier for the patient to view and understand, as well as allowing for on-the-spot visualization of any diagnoses or proposed treatments.

If, as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, then a holographic display might be worth ten thousand words of medical jargon.

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are equally exciting, but, to the extent that they require us to view them through devices, may have different uses.  At some point, though, the three technologies may, for all practical purposes, merge into a unified "hand-free" interactive experience.

So, kudos to RED and Leia for showing us the way forward with smartphones.  The future of holographic displays can't come fast enough.