We use the five natural senses (sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste) to interact with and learn from the world around us. This incorporates all kinds of learning; namely formal, non-formal and informal. We use these five senses spontaneously to interact with the physical information. However, we interact quite differently when we interact with digital information. Therefore, we learn differently while communicating with the digital world (Papert 1981) and these changes could pose challenges for learning and accessing information seamlessly as it involves a shift in the way of using our senses. It happens due to the obvious differences between the digital and physical worlds. Over the years, modern technologies try to establish a workable synergy between the digital and physical worlds, but still, there is a considerable gap between these two. The ‘SIxthSense’ technology tries to bridge this gap between the digital and the physical worlds by augmenting the physical world around us with digital and provides the opportunity to interact with the digital world in quite the same way we interact with the physical world. It uses a camera and a projector mounted in a pendant like wearable device and uses gestural method for interaction. It sees what the user sees and, and visually augments any surfaces or objects we are interacting with (Mistry 2009). It seamlessly uses physical information to interact with the relevant digital information and provide it to the user. By understanding the physical world quite in the same way we do, it literally attempts to free information from its confines by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world a computer (Mistry 2009). This revolutionizing technology wins the inventions of the year 2009 and although it is still under work in progress, it perhaps shows a huge potentiality of fostering learning by erasing the barriers between the digital and physical world up to a great extent. Therefore, this paper seeks to find out; how can the ‘SixthSense’ technology foster lifelong learning in present situation, where we need to interact with the digital world more often than ever. To explore the issue, it asks:

How does the ‘SixthSense’ technology help in human learning in contemporary time? and

What could be the consequences of the ‘SixtehSense’ technology in fostering lifelong learning in contemporary perspective?

The objectives of this paper are to explore the mechanisms of learning, which occurs while using the ‘SixthSense’ technology, and discuss some of the possibilities of this technology to foster formal, non-formal and informal learning at different stages of life. It also aims to be critical on the future use of this technology and provides areas of future studies in this regard. For the analysis, it uses the foundation theory of constructivism by Jean Piaget (1967) and John Dewey (1969) and consults the theory of ‘constructionism’ by Seymour Papert (1991). These theories help to explain how modern technologies can change learning with a special focus on lifelong learning opportunities by the ‘SixthSense’ technology.

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