• • Up until recently, the view of most people was that interacting with the digital world would mean “jacking in” to some sort of fully-simulated virtual reality environment. However, a recent confluence of technologies is beginning to birth a new outlook on digital interaction: Augmented Reality.
  • Current iterations of AR technology are exemplified by the iPhone 3GS. This state-of-the-art phone combines ample storage space (up to 32 Gb), GPS location, compass, video camera, impressive processing and RAM capacity (for doing complex visual recognition), and touch-screen interaction. These integrated, high-quality elements make the iPhone a good platform for writing AR applications.
  • AR interfaces overlay digital information over our analog sight system (eyes) through technological mediation of some sort. This mediation can be in the form of images projected directly on the retina, through a loupe or other viewing device (such as a phone), and maybe one day through direct ocular prostheses.
  • Augmented Reality applications include a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, military and emergency-response, prospecting, architecture and other real-world design fields, sight-seeing, collaboration (usually with the name “mixed reality”), and entertainment.
  • Some existing examples of augmented reality for iPhone include:
    • Le Bar Guide, sponsored by Stella Artois, transforms the iPhone into a loupe: hold it up and turn, and it will tell you where the nearest Stella-serving bar is located, as well as give you reviews and indications of amenities.
    • Car Finder solves a minor annoyance that many people face; namely, the “where did I park” moment that people experience upon leaving a shopping center or other location with a large parking lot. Simply ping your location upon leaving your car, and when you’re ready to return, the application will guide you on the quickest path back to where you’ve parked.

For the first homework assignment, we were tasked with setting up a blog (or integrating course content into our existing blog), and then to “find a modern and timely place on the Web that deals with the future of the same or a similar topic” as a three of the links in the syllabus. Find my three links inside…

1. Augmented Reality. I’m sure the concept has been around for a long time, but in the past few months, a recent in-vogue meme has been the coming of a slew of augmented reality applications for mobile devices that will let you see an overlay of information on top of the physical world. For example, wearing my AR goggles while walking around town would show me the twitter username floating above a person’s head.  The most recent chatter has been regarding the iPhone 3GS; its more powerful processor, roomier RAM, and especially the built-in GPS and compass make it possible.  For example, the Metro Paris iPhone app overlays nearby businesses and can direct the user to the nearest subway entrance.
2. Spime. In August 2004, Bruce Sterling suggested a type of technological device that, through pervasive RFID and GPS tracking, can track its own history of use and interact with the world. He also gave an amazing talk at SXSW Interactive (the keynote address, actually), where he expounded upon those ideas (listen). There are not a lot of sites out there talking about this end-to-end lifecycle management, which is why I chose to write one of the required opinion papers (read my paper) on the subject for Dr. Wigand’s eCommerce class last year.
3. Transhumanism. Starting with the concept that every species is a species undergoing evolution, transhumanists seek to use our knowledge of the world to drive our evolution to unprecedented speeds.  One of the best media I’ve found regarding transhumanist thinking is H+ Magazine, a quarterly magazine available online. Current topics include designer babies, the Singularity, a retrospective on Biosphere 2, and artificial intelligence in video game bots.

These topics and their associated links make for fascinating reading, and I suggest you take a look!