• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, July 7, 2017

Augmented reality (AR) will "create the screenless future without compromising our access to information," according to Andrew Murphy.

Murphy, managing partner at Loup Ventures, founded by Gene Munster, a former analyst at Minneapolis-based Piper Jaffray, thinks "AR will improve and expand our access to information."

I agree that AR will do this without screens. In fact, AR presents a promising way to transition into holographic images and search for information on the internet without a traditional screen. AR provides an artificially created reality by placing a layer of information streamed from the internet on what the person sees around them in the real world.

In October 2016, Gartner predicted that 30% of searches would occur without a screen by 2020. And as I noted back then, technology such as Google Home, Amazon Echo and others will make this possible. But these technologies just remove the screen. Murphy is leaning more toward AR finding a way to augment the experience and remove the screen for people on the go. He points to mobile devices and wearables.

Google Glass may not have been such a farfetched idea, although perhaps a bit ahead of its time. Consumers were not quite ready for the innovation. It would become the lightest-weight wearable as a replacement to a phone. Murphy points out that 64% of adults wear glasses. In a blog post, he explains how Apple will likely design glasses that feel they are only turned on and connected when the wearer needs to access information.

Perhaps the access to answers through an internet-connected device also means the search for information, similar to the way Google Glass presented information.

"Each of Apple’s major new product launches in recent years (Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod) helps to solve the screen problem by providing easier access to digital information by augmenting reality," Murphy writes. "Using haptic, audio, and speech user interfaces, we are less reliant on touchscreen user interfaces."