Augmented Reality Technology and Communication
The video below represents a new cutting-edge technology that again, reshapes our communications and challenges our control over how we communicate. We could say first there was virtual reality. Then there was Minority Report. Now there is Augmented Reality (reality augmented by technology with communication tools built on the web and displayed through a “window”…in this case, the window being an iPhone).
Before you watch the video though, take a moment to read my considerations on the impact of a new technology such as Augmented Reality.
It’s been pretty amazing- being able to track the journey of our two friends, technology and real life. Together, they’ve set a new path for future generations, across the world. Interaction with technology is becoming less of a real life-to-technology “option,” and more of a real life-and-technology culture. The difference is stunning, with technology’s precedence in our communication patterns growing.
Technology, with its significance and affectations, appears lighter or weightier depending on how involved you are with our current youth. Many parents with middle school and high school aged children know too well how a real life-and-technology culture creates awkward pains as our control over our method of communication changes. As a culture, we’re still figuring it out. More than 1/2 the people I talk to aren’t really sure even what to do with sites like Twitter. Is your TV your computer or your computer your TV? Overlap of technology and communications is confusing.
At this point in our developing relationship with technology, we must inherit a strategy to approaching whichever technologies settle down into the mainstream. A lot of confusion is caused when many of our typical mainstream users actually are exposed to and get their hands on cutting-edge-technology because of how accessible it is on the web. Until the technology becomes widely accepted, available, and explained we’re going to have friction with the way we interact with technology as individuals and as families.
This is a video of the first beta version of TwittARound – an augmented reality Twitter viewer on the iPhone 3GS. It shows live tweets around your location on the horizon. Because of video see-through effect you see where the tweet comes from and how far it is away.
In reference to our relationship with our communication technology, you write: “As a culture, we’re still figuring it out.” This is true, and indeed it applies to our relationship with all of our technology.
So what? Is this statement intended to be revelatory? Do you think that you are disclosing something interesting about the human condition? Much of our history as a species distinct from other primates has been characterized by our figuring out one technology or the other. The hittites made iron weapons, and their neighbors were forced to figure out how to deal with it. The cold war was, in no small part, our attempt to figure out how to deal with nuclear weapons. Other examples abound. Indeed, it is not only in the modern era that we have been forced to figure out how to handle communication technology. The movable type printing press was a new communication technology not as revolutionary, but in fact, more revolutionary than the cellular phone. A lot of figuring out needed to be done with respect to our relationship to the new availability and distributability (yes, I know this is not a word) of information that came about with the invention of the movable type press.
The point is this: I agree with most of what you say, but it is not novel or interesting. Humans have been going through this for millennia. We will continue going through it. Our species’ (seemingly unique) ability to create technology naturally creates additional environmental factors to which we are not instantly adapted (individually and in larger selection units). Given that evolution is a fundamentally non-directed process, we have no reason to expect that we will adapt to these changes. It is as much to say, we have reason to believe that we will spend a lot of time figuring it out and no reason to believe that we will ever actually get it.
I like your points and completely agree with your historical analysis of man and his approach to technology. My notes concerning the technology and its relationship to a larger (even a perhaps mundane) communication theory are aimed to reinvigorate thought by the mainstream, individuals who may not consider this or have not considered this in a while. Although not necessarily revelatory, I enjoy attempting to spark more in depth conversation around a new technology, rather than simply posting a video. Your comments helped to really bring full circle the type of history I wanted to present to those who may not have considered it. Thanks!
Also- for what it’s worth, revelation for many has been a re-enlightenment of the basic and foundational.