Tag: #web3.0

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Web 3.0 Tech Med/Health Tech

Thoughts On How India Can Leapfrog In Web3 

MED HEALTH WEB3.0

 

Written by : Ajit Padmanabh on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Introduction

For an entrepreneur and a technologist like myself, the potential of Web3 bringing in a Hardware manufacturing and R&D revolution in India, feels like music to the ears. India has long been viewed as a cheaper alternative for software services, an industry largely responsible for creating millionaires and scores of ambitious tech entrepreneurs.

Now, with the Hitech Manufacturing facilities being set up in various states, including Mysore and Bangalore, it’s time the world takes notice of India for their high-end hardware needs.

India – The Potential

India is the fastest-growing trillion-dollar economy in the world and the fifth-largest overall, with a nominal GDP of $2.94 trillion. India became the fifth-largest economy in 2019, overtaking the United Kingdom and France.

India is expected to overtake Germany to become fourth-largest economy in 2026 and Japan to become third largest in 2034, according to a recent report by the UK-based Center for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).

The Indian Software services industry contributes 8% to the overall GDP currently (from 1.2% in 1998), and is among its largest contributors. 

India is blessed with a demographic dividend – 60% of the 1.3Bn population being under 35 years of age. Compared to other Asian giants like China and Japan, India is in an extremely favorable position to chart out a growth trajectory for the 21st century, especially in tech sectors like Hitech Manufacturing, Semiconductors, Device Hardware etc.India has been striving to attract foreign investment across sectors and is steadily climbing up the ladder as far as ease of doing business is concerned, worldwide. 

India is also the second largest mobile phone market in the world, next only to China. 

The government is taking steps to boost local manufacturing through initiatives such as the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for large-scale electronics manufacturing, Scheme for Promotion of Manufacturing of Electronic Components and Semiconductors (SPECS), and the scheme for modified Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMC 2.0). Recently, the announcement of India’s first semiconductor plant to be setup in Mysore at a cost of ₹22,900 crore ($3 billion), has ushered-in a new wave of focus on hardware across the nation. 

The semiconductor plant is expected to generate 1,500 high-tech and high-caliber jobs, and about 10,000 ancillary jobs, according to K.S. Sudheer, General Manager, Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM), Mysore Cluster. 

Opportunities in Hardware Development with Web3

As far as systems’ topology for Web3 is concerned, the visualization landscape is driven by VR/AR. For decades, VR has seemed like a futuristic dream that is just around the corner, but never reaches its full potential. 

This time, however, might really be different. Recent advances in the power of VR hardware, notably the headsets and processors used to produce realistic VR experiences, suggest that VR is finally powerful enough and cheap enough to go mainstream.1 It, however, remains clunky and heavy leading to a cognitive loss of immersion for the user. 

To add to it, multi-sensory experiences demand peripheral wearables like Haptic Gloves and suits, among others, further depleting the embodied cognition necessary for Web3 immersive experiences. In fact, one of the reasons for VR not being adopted mainstream is the weight and discomfort with the present HMDs (Head-Mounted Devices).

R&D Opportunities with Head-Mounted Devices

This is a great opportunity for India to shine with indigenous R&D that could not only look to reduce the size and increase the comfort of these HMDs but also price them so as to disrupt the global market. 

In terms of XR devices, a beginning has been made with JioGlass (Tesseract) and AjnaLens but complete indigenous technology across the supply-chain is still undeveloped. Some of the areas for R&D include assessment of the underlying optics technology in HMDs. For example, a technique called polarization-based optical folding is a way to design lenses so light bounces in the right way to the human eye so on-screen images are displayed properly—but the light doesn’t need to physically travel as far as it does in traditional optics. That makes the space needed for VR optics smaller. 

The other technique under consideration is holographic optics, an optics technology that “bends light like a lens but looks like a thin, transparent sticker”. Holographic optics replace glass or plastic lenses, making the resulting VR headset much lighter. In fact, these advances could make the VR headsets of tomorrow, with proposed designs less than 10mm in thickness. Meta is at the forefront of this research with large investments.2

Clearly, the stakes are high and so is the investment. It’s definitely a bus India cannot afford to miss. Timely interventions have already been initiated by the Govt.

Our innovative minds need to be brought together from multiple domains like Physics, Material Sciences, Nanotechnology, Neurosciences etc. across research institutes like IITs, IISc to help crack the pilot-prototype-fabrication-commercialization cycle. 

R&D Opportunities with Multi-sensory Peripheral Devices

Today, research into multi-sensory experiences yields peripheral devices for each sensory experience – Gloves and Suits for Haptics (touch), scent-based devices (smell) and gustatory (taste) devices. 

A person who wants to be immersed in the virtual world should have no cognition of the real world. In this case, however, the user is well aware of these devices clinging to him, thanks to their weight and design, thereby hampering the experience and the power of Web3, for the user.

The opportunity, therefore, is to look at an integrated multi-sensory device as well as BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) capabilities that can be leveraged to create a seamless, immersive experience for the user. It is noteworthy to mention that initial steps in this regard have been undertaken at various IITs, especially IIT Chennai (Haptics), IIT Jodhpur (Sensory Devices) and IIT Bhubaneswar. 

A Defense-Academia-Industry collaborative setup would help accelerate targeted research into design and usage of such devices. 

This has huge potential for India in terms of IP ownership, Manufacturing and Commercialization, on a global scale. The aesthetics and function of these devices are equally important. These devices should be disruptive and act as lifestyle products which could yield greater market access globally.

Conclusion

Some of you reading this article may have your own ideas/concepts. The need of the hour is to institutionalize hardware R&D for Web3 and execute it on mission-mode much like what India did with institutions like ISRO and BARC.

It’s time for the world to take note of India as a viable and necessary market and destination for hardware launches and cutting-edge research & development in hardware manufacturing and testing. India needs to set itself up and be laser-focused on the path of R&D, Aesthetics and Commercialization of indigenous hardware for Web3, to realize that leapfrog moment.

References

  1. https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/2/250071-the-state-of-virtual-reality-hardware/fulltext
  2. https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/2/250071-the-state-of-virtual-reality-hardware/fulltext 

 

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Food Tech Web 3.0 Tech

A Paradigm Shift is Possible in the Metaverse Experience

metaverse

Written by : Ajit Padmanabh on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Only if these 2 technologies become a reality!

There is no doubt about it – Metaverse is the next Internet and is here to stay for a couple of generations, if not more. It is also a natural evolution from today’s 2D Internet to be able to experience the Digital Universe in 3D! With today’s technology advancements and research, if we can plug 2 technologies into the Metaverse, it would be a limitless opportunity. 

What are these 2 technologies, you ask? Sensory technologies involving Olfactory and Gustatory systems. In simpler terms, Smell and Taste, respectively. With the pandemic having affected many people with the loss of sense and taste and they having reported a loss of interest in life owing to the sensory loss, it makes sense to build these technologies for the Metaverse.  

Why Sensory Technologies

You may be familiar with the reductionist philosophy. It’s the practice of analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of its simple or fundamental constituents, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation. 

Quoting few examples from Britannica1, the ideas that physical bodies are collections of atoms or that a given mental state (e.g., one person’s belief that snow is white) is identical to a particular physical state (the firing of certain neurons in that person’s brain) are examples of reductionism.

With advances in neuroscientific research in the last century, there is an existence of what is known as Cortical Homunculus. A cortical homunculus is a distorted representation of the human body, based on a neurological “map” of the areas and proportions of the human brain dedicated to processing motor functions, or sensory functions, for different parts of the body. A 2D representation of the sensory homunculus is shown below. 

Fig.1 A 2D Cortical Sensory homunculus

All signals are received by the primary sensory cortex in the brain. The amount of cortex devoted to any given body region is not proportional to that body region’s surface area or volume, but rather to how richly innervated that region is.

Areas of the body with more complex and/or more numerous sensory or motor connections are represented as larger in the homunculus, while those with less complex and/or less numerous connections are represented as smaller.2 You’d notice that the significant amount of brain-processing is accorded to sensory functions, including those of taste and smell. 

If we are to look at the proposition of Metaverse being an alternate universe and where you are expected to spend considerable amount of time, it has to be capable of attracting your attention not only visually or aurally (as is the case with the 2D internet of today) but as a multi-sensory experience involving haptics (touch), olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste) technologies as well.

Hence, it is critical to understand and invest in these sensory technologies and ensure that the promise of Metaverse is realized in entirety.

A Sneak Peek into Multi-sensory Prototypes and Ongoing Research 

A lot of research and development has gone into haptic (touch) technologies with many commercially available solutions as well. Since the solutions are fairly established, we will focus on research into olfactory and gustatory technology.

Olfactory Prototypes and Research

As far as olfactory technologies are concerned, considerable research is being performed on classification and extraction of scents so as to define the exact sense stimulus in the brain which then can be simulated using ergonomic hardware. 

According to Judith Amores, a research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, whose work is focused on scent and virtual reality – “People don’t really appreciate the sense of smell,” she said. “It’s actually so important, it’s so unexplored, and it’s so powerful.”3

OVR Technologies, a Burlington, Vermont-based startup, is one of the few companies developing this technology for Virtual Reality. While reproducing real-world odors with chemicals is challenging, it opens up new possibilities in nostalgic experiences as odor is associated with memories. With earlier 5D systems, scent technology had certain issues, namely the mixing up and lingering of scents long after the experience. This is being fixed with AI-driven algorithms that trigger various odors and control their intensity, duration among other parameters. 

 Lastly, there is research on olfactory-powered deaddiction programs in Virtual Reality, which could prove to be a panacea in the Metaverse. Closer home, research into olfactory is ongoing at various institutes including IIT, Jodhpur.

Gustatory Prototypes and Research

Research into gustatory prototypes is in its early days. The idea is to simulate taste in the physical world first and then look to replicate it in the virtual world. The “lickable screen,” called the “Norimaki Synthesizer,” uses five different gels, each corresponding to the five tastes the human tongue can distinguish between — salty, acidic, bitter, sweet, and umami. 

By weakening and strengthening these five different tastes through the use of electrical currents, the device can reproduce any “arbitrary taste,” according to the research.4 “Like an optical display that uses lights of three basic colors to produce arbitrary colors, this display can synthesize and distribute arbitrary tastes together with the data acquired by taste sensors,” said Homei Miyashita, researcher at Meiji University, Japan. 

In a recent development, A team at the Carnegie Mellon University, a private institution in Pittsburgh, US, have made it possible for users to feel the virtual world in and on their mouth, without making physical contact. What the user can feel are tactile sensations such as drinking from a water fountain, wind on the face.5 Project Nourished, a VR food start-up, has been experimenting with technology to trick taste buds and promote sustainability.6

Conclusion

Metaverse is here to stay and become an integral part of who we are. Multi-sensory metaverse, in its complete form, will not only make it real and immersive but will also open up new industry verticals hitherto unknown as of today. A paradigm shift is also possible in Hospitality, Travel & Tourism and Entertainment industries with such technologies.

There is huge potential to be at the forefront of research and commercialization of such technologies in India – Tasty food for thought for investors and research institutes across the country!

References:

  1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/reductionism
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus 
  3. https://www.wbur.org/news/2022/03/14/virtual-reality-smell-ovr-technology
  4. https://futurism.com/the-byte/device-simulate-any-flavor  
  5. https://www.cnbctv18.com/technology/ultrasound-vr-device-lets-users-touch-and-feel-in-mouths-vr-kiss-13378502.htm

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AI Tech Web 3.0 Tech

Web3.0:The Real decentralized Internet 

web3.0

Written by Femi Omoshona on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Decentralized technology is the present and the early we start investing our time, energy and resources trying to understand what future DApp looks like the better for us. 

Blockchain, AI, AR and IOT are amazing technologies we should be wrapping our brain around in this 21st century.

In this article, I lay out how the web has evolved, where it’s going next, and how Africa as a continent can position itself for the future.

Think about how the internet affects your life on a daily basis since it was discovered in early 1990. Internet, a system architecture that has revolutionized communications and methods of commerce by allowing various computer networks around the world to interconnect. Sometimes referred to as a network of networks, the Internet emerged in the United States in the 1970s but did not become visible to the general public until the early 1990s.

By 2020, approximately 4.5 billion people, or more than half of the world’s population, were estimated to have access to the Internet.

The Evolution of the Web

The evolution of the web can be classified into three separate stages: Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3.0.

Web 1.0  are static web sites and personal sites, the term used for the earliest version of the Internet as it emerged from its origins with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and became, for the first time, a global network representing the future of digital communications. Web 1.0  offered little information and was accessible to users across the world; these pages had little or no functionality, flexibility, or user-generated content.

Web 2.0 is called the “read/write” web, which seems to indicate an updated version of the current World Wide Web, which is known as Web 1.0. It’s more accurate to think of Web 2.0 as a shift in thinking and focus on web design. Instead of static HTML pages with little or no interaction between users, Web 2.0 represents a shift to interactive functionality and compatibility through some of the following features: User-generated content, Transparency in data and integrations.

Web 3.0 (…Loading)

Web 3.0 is the next stage of the web evolution that would make the internet more intelligent or process information with near-human-like intelligence through the power of AI systems that could run smart programs to assist users.

Tim Berners-Lee had said that the Semantic Web is meant to “automatically” interface with systems, people and home devices. As such, content creation and decision-making processes will involve both humans and machines. This would enable the intelligent creation and distribution of highly-tailored content straight to every internet consumer.

Key Features of Web 3.0

To really understand the next stage of the internet, we need to take a look at the four key features of Web 3.0:

Semantic Web

Semantic(s) is the study of the relationship between words. Therefore, the Semantic Web, according to Berners-Lee, enables computers to analyze loads of data from the Web, which includes content, transactions and links between persons.

Artificial Intelligence

Web 3.0 machines can read and decipher the meaning and emotions conveyed by a set of data, it brings forth intelligent machines. Although Web 2.0 presents similar capabilities, it is still predominantly human-based, which opens up room for corrupt behaviors such as biased product reviews, rigged ratings, etc.

For instance, online review platforms like Trustpilot provide a way for consumers to review any product or service. Unfortunately, a company can simply gather a large group of people and pay them to create positive reviews for its undeserving products. Therefore, the internet needs AI to learn how to distinguish the genuine from the fake in order to provide reliable data.

Web3.0 future for Africa

Across the world, the new Web3 economy is giving birth to myriad opportunities and the implications for the African continent are massive. Code 247 Foundation is on a mission to raised the next generation of Africa talent who will leverage the latest blockchain technologies to provide real value to billions of unbanked, underbanked and underserved individuals across Africa and other emerging markets, and we’re excited to see various blockchain protocols, startups, investors, grant funders and governments interested in doing the same.

Web3 can open up an intra-African exchange economy, it can be used for purchases and transportation between African nations. It will assist Africans to generate more economic value in a wider market.

In Africa, the evolution of blockchain technology has interested many governments across the Africa countries  to explore blockchain-based solutions, creating Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) that are likely to develop a more informed approach to the Web3 economy along with policy frameworks in line with the needs of everyday users.

Web 3 can be used to solve some of the challenges in Africa, issues of land ownership:

It is no secret the messy land management in most African countries has made it harder for citizens to acquire genuine land. This has meant that most communities are left poor due to lack of access to manage and develop their lands. Other challenges include faulk drugs, financial transactions and management of traffic etc.

Conclusion

We believe in Africa 100%. Africa can be great, will be great and must be great. Blockchain and Web3 technologies will be revolutionary in Africa. There are a lot of problems with currency and corruption in Africa.

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