{"id":6024,"date":"2017-04-28T17:40:27","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T21:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/magic-leap-reinventing-how-we-see-the-world\/"},"modified":"2017-04-28T17:40:27","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T21:40:27","slug":"magic-leap-reinventing-how-we-see-the-world","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-digit\/submission\/magic-leap-reinventing-how-we-see-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Magic Leap \u2013 Reinventing How We See the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Magic Leap \u2013 Reinventing how we see the World<\/p>\n

By 2017, Magic Leap has raised nearly 1.4 Billion Dollars and most Americans have never even heard of them.[i]<\/a>\u00a0 Founded seven years earlier, this tech behemoth is still operating in stealth mode having raised 3 institutional rounds of funding without releasing even the beta version of a product.[ii]<\/a>\u00a0 In its demonstrations to investors though, the company has demonstrated a capacity to project realistic appearing, three dimensional images from a single piece of hardware without requiring the users to wear any special equipment.<\/p>\n

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Augmented Reality:<\/p>\n

Magic Leap is leading the category of augmented reality.\u00a0 This, in contradiction to virtual reality, is a state in which images and projections are experienced by a user in conjunction with the real world.\u00a0 The first major player in the space was Googles launch of Google Glasses, where the company tried to convince the public that they could wear these devices and overlay information directly from google onto their field of vision in the real world.[iii]<\/a>\u00a0 The product itself has since been discontinued, but the concept remains more alluring than basic functions of Virtual Reality were a user in engrossed into a totally new world.\u00a0 Augmented Reality has allowed entrepreneurs and investors to envision hundreds of applications, with a lower \u2018a,\u2019 for the use of this technology beyond entertainment and video games.\u00a0 It is now possible to believe that doctors will be able to overlay critical information onto a patient while conducting life-saving surgery, that a wearable lens will enable users to project information from the internet directly into their natural field of vision, or as Magic Leap has done, that images can be altered into a naked eye that convinces the brain it is seeing shapes and information.[iv]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Magic Leap:<\/p>\n

The company launched in 2010 by Rony Abovitz, an eccentric character who was raised by Israeli Immigrant parents in Florida.[v]<\/a>\u00a0 Prior to launching Magic Leap, Mr. Abovitz started and sold Z-Kat, a medical robotic company which was designing a mechanical arm capable of conducting surgeries.[vi]<\/a>\u00a0 He had studied Biomedical engineering at the University of Miami and had commented that his observation of orthopedic surgeries was \u201cglorified carpentry\u201d were even the best practitioners were beholden to \u201clow tech tool box\u201d and believed that the field was due for major technical advancements.[vii]<\/a><\/p>\n

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AR without Glasses:<\/p>\n

Magic Leap projects light in such a way that user \u2018sees\u2019 images that do not exist.\u00a0 There are no glasses need and no over the eye immersive world to succumb to.\u00a0 Just the users in a room with images broadcast into their vision.<\/p>\n