What Can We Expect From the Digital Evolution in Coming Years?

According to experts, we live in a crucial moment of digital evolution and, very soon, advances will begin to occur that will completely change our daily lives. Brain-computer interfaces or BCIs are nothing new. They are also known as brain-machine interfaces (BMIs), direct neural interfaces (INDs) or simply BCI technology. Its origin dates back to no less than 1875, when Richard Caton used a galvanometer to analyze the electrical impulses existing on the surface of the living brain of some animals.

In any case, it took almost a hundred years, until 1970, for even formal research to begin with the first BCI devices. This research took place at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

BCI technology

Broadly speaking, this technology is based on the acquisition of neural information for its processing and interpretation through a computer. Although most of the advances in this regard have been applied in the medical and health sector (neuronal prostheses to recover hearing, sight or mobility), according to experts, BCI technology is called to revolutionize the leisure industry, and also the of our daily life, so linked, for example, to smartphones and computers.

This is due, in large part, to the paths that technological evolution has been taking in recent years. Without going any further, at present, we find ourselves in the midst of a battle between the giants of the digital world to become the first to captivate the general public with their virtual reality devices.

Human beings have been longing for decades for a device that can not only transport us to a world as real as ours, on a digital medium, but also allow us to travel to places we have never seen and live great adventures, like the ones we see in movies.

Virtual leisure sectors

This also responds to a trend that has remained constant in recent years: the substitution of physical products and services for virtual ones. We see a clear example of this in the casino games sector and how this industry has grown vertiginously in the digital world, displacing its physical alternatives and becoming in one of the virtual leisure sectors that is growing the most.

Platforms like VegasSlotsOnline make the reason for this growth clear: completely free games, reviews that guide us when choosing the best casino and payment methods for popular online casinos such as mastercard and visa credit cards with very high security standards. In this way, the user only has to worry about choosing the time and place to best enjoy the game.

Virtual streaming platforms

Something similar has happened with physical audiovisual products such as DVD or Blu-ray, which have been replaced by virtual streaming platforms such as Netflix, which closed 2021 with a net profit of more than 5,100 million dollars, a figure that represents a improvement of no less than 85% compared to the results obtained in 2021.

There is no doubt that both examples help us to understand the trend towards virtualization, which will soon materialize in a growing acceptance of virtual reality, through more accessible and efficient devices; and that, in the medium term, it will also translate into BCI devices that allow us to carry out all kinds of tasks directly with our thoughts.

The Metaverse

However, there are still many unknowns to be resolved. The first of them, of course, is what the virtual reality promoted by the Metaverse is going to be like. What kind of devices will go on sale in the next few years? Will they be really accessible to reach the general public? Has the user experience been improved to meet the expectations we talked about at the beginning of the article?

According to specialists, virtual reality is getting closer to the general public every day, but BCI devices are another story. If, as has been said, the development of headbands or other types of brain-computer interface formats culminates in the launch of various products on the market, they will surely not be cheap. In any case, we still have a few puzzles to solve before we get to this point, and the next few years are going to be exciting in terms of digital evolution.