blog post 1 – Reflection on a lecture

I found the lectures in week 1 and week 2 very interesting and I took away from them some very interesting things but the one that inspired me and my way of thinking the most was the emerging technologies, in week one. I was fascinated y the emerging technologies lecture as I never explored the topics of AI and XR and to be honest I was never particularly interested in them until now. I was surprised to learn that fashion trends are actually just patterns and that AI’s almost ‘predict the future’. They know what consumers will like before they know they like it. They are optimized to find the best patterns as they repeat the same pattern over and over again until they get the perfect outcome. Being a consumer myself I found myself thinking a lot about this and all the past, present, and future trends I would explore knowing that someone out there probably already knows what they are. I found this fascinating. I was also left speechless when the lecturer talked about virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), and augmented reality (AR). Thinking that these could soon become a new way of living scared me. I find that there is some sort of authenticity in attending a live fashion show or trying on new clothes and feeling the materials or changing your hairstyle and knowing that all of these things can be done virtually feels very weird. There are now apps where you can change your hair color and see what it would look like before actually doing it or even websites that generate new faces that do not exist, new people. Digital humans could become major influencers on social media platforms. You can now also create digital clothing and allow people to ‘try it on’ before it’s even made and turn shopping into an immersive experience and take people to places that don’t currently exist within the store environment through augmented reality glasses. Technology is evolving at a very fast pace and it’s incredible that we can do so many things through it but it also left me quite unsettled knowing that so many day to day activities that are essential to our entertainment can be done through technology without physically having to move.