Leslie Shannon, NOKIA's expert in predicting new technologies and their applications, gave a lecture at VERN University entitled "Early Signals / Future Scenarios".

"Every new technology solves a certain problem, but it also creates new problems."

With these words, Leslie Shanon, Head of Ecosystem and Trend Scouting at NOKIA, started her lecture organized by NOKIA and VERN’ University under the name "Early Signals / Future Scenarios".

Leslie Shannon, a global expert in forecasting new technologies and areas of their application, noted that the main driver of the wider application of 5G technology was the so-called "Split the chip moment", i.e. the moment when corporations became aware that they had to " split chips" and that 5G technology reduces their logistics costs. Also, that the introduction of 5G will simplify consumers' daily lives.

As the wider application of new technologies always starts in corporations, NOKIA's expert explained what the current areas of application of 5G technologies are and what benefits they bring to sectors such as telephony, gaming, engineering, transport, health, and even fish farming in Norway or vegetable quality control in aero farms in the US.

"The application of new technologies always starts first in corporations, while user application is yet to come and will be much more important, especially in the augmented reality segment. 4G has turned our mobile phone into a viewing device, giving us 2D mapping and access to interesting content. 5G will convert our mobile phone into a so-called headset or glasses, mapping will be three-dimensional, and content - only the sky is the limit. "

Leslie pointed out that the wider application of 5G technology will affect the solution of another social problem, and that is the so-called social exclusion because you will no longer look at the screen, but through the screen, and technology will allow you to add context to the content. And that's the twin brother of the metaverse. "

"I believe that by 2030 AR headsets (augmented reality glasses) will replace mobile phones, as the metaverse meets the prerequisites for the development of such an environment - the unification of physical and virtual worlds, the persistence of avatars across all platforms, fully operational economy and platform regardless of the service provider and decentralized operations."

Numerous technology giants are already investing billions of dollars in prototype research and development in all segments of augmented reality, and among the most generous are Apple, Microsoft, Google, Jio, Meta, Niantic, Snapchat, and Amazon.

Communication Department

Photographs: Petar Vučetić

Date of publication: May 5, 2022