The Next Big Thing in Tech: Wayy cool. Augmented Reality or AR. This is not fiction. This is tomorrow.
So, what is augmented reality? Simply, augmented reality is our everyday perception of reality that is enhanced by computer-generated data, such as in a GPS navigational system, for example.
The applications for AR are rather new, but forms of AR have been around for years, when computer scientists at MIT, the W3C and other futuristic institutions donned special glasses that had an added visual layer built into them. The practical applications we're beginning to see now are cool and future applications are promising -- almost beyond comprehension.
Yet, it's more than a toy. It often works with QR (quick response) codes -- those small, square boxes with squiggly lines you see on envelopes and on an increasing number of products. In Seoul, commuters use their smart phones to tap into the QR codes on train ads to buy groceries, which are at their doorstep by the time commuters arrive home. Applications not far in the future for North America include looking at a 'For Sale' sign in your neighborhood and then tapping the QR code to see an augmented reality 3D tour of the property in front of you.
This is a visual technology and to truly understand how it works, here is an ultra cool video from Microsoft Office's Future Vision Series.
This is a six-minute video. Grab a beer and some popcorn, because you're in for the ride of your life. Then get a new iPhone. I watched this several times to get a description of the scenes.
~*~*~*~*~*~* ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Scene 1: Johanesburg airport, ground transportation. Ayla is a young professional whom we see waiting for a taxi at the airport. Her eyeglasses are translating Afrikaans into English. She gets into the taxi and pulls out her smartphone and swipes her finger along its touch surface. No keys to press; everything is a touch screen. On her smartphone, which is more than a phone -- it is a smart device -- she sees a choice of ‘Travel Hub’ or ‘Kitchen Wall’. She touches ‘Travel Hub’ and looks up at a building and sees the words ‘Tomorrow’s meeting is here’ flashed in letters upon the surface of the building.
Ayla presses 'Hotel Check In' on her smartphone and an image of a key floats into view. She taps the digital key check in and the next screen slides into place with the words, ‘Your room is ready.’
Next, we see a bellhop in the airport, who pulls out his smart device and an image of Ayla pops up with her preferences: English speaking, room number, number of nights and number of bags. The bellhop meets Ayla as her taxi pulls into the hotel. He brings her bag to her room.
Scene 2: Hong Kong subway. A young man is in the subway points his smart device at an AR picture of a man who's advertising a benefit concert. The young man pledges $HK 20 for this benefit concert, checks to see the number of benefit pledges (and amounts) by station and then boards his train.
Back to Scene 1. Ayla is in her hotel room and chooses breakfast by pointing her smart device at an iPad-like device on the wall, which has a menu displayed on it. Then, she uses her smart device to tap the iPad-like device to for the ‘green wall proposal’ that she needs to review for the meeting. The proposal opens up to a two-page display, much like it would on a current e-book reader, but this display is sized to accommodate standard-sized, left- and right-hand book pages on the screen. She taps a section and a tooltip pops up. She taps and it copies. She taps another section and pastes the copied section into the document.
The next scene is of co-workers on this proposal, who tap, swipe or wave to effect changes on the screens. A keyboard is also available. We must be in Hong Kong, because the man in the Hong Kong subway is now in the office with another man, with other meeting participants appearing virtually. Meeting participants wave, tap and swipe to get to the information they need for the ‘green wall proposal.’
The next scene is Ayla’s house in the US, where her young daughter does homework on the kitchen table via her iPad-like device. Dad comes in. Daughter taps her smart pad to ask mom’s help for a bake sale recipe for school. Daughter calls mom on the phone and mom answers from her hotel room in Johannesburg. Dad taps the refrigerator door to see what’s inside the refrigerator.
Mom taps the wall smart pad and looks at pies. Daughter wants a different pie. Something different pops up on the wall iPad, a recipe for Melktart, a South African recipe for custard. Daughter agrees that this is the special recipe she wants for the bake sale. The recipe then pops up on the wall-sized smart pad and mom sends it to the daughter, who uses it for the bake sale.
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Comments: 109
I waver between loving new tech things and hating new tech things. (My parents were scientists; they loved tech more than I did).
BTY - Happy New Year!
Yes, it takes decades between lab and consumer use.
how wonderful
is the golden dawn of fiction
the building blocks of reality!
I was heartened to see double-page technology on the iPad-like Nook/Kindle reader, because that is one of my gripes about N/K and why I prefer Adobe ePub, where I can read half a page in large font (tired) or full page or two pages.
For information searching, the tablet like it was in the video - with tap/swipe copy, search and paste - certainly is better than a laptop. But people need to use a keyboard for functions, too.
Thanks for sharing and submitting to
The Surreal Circus.
i am reminded that marshall mcluhan's prediction in the 60s that we will become a global village... has happened in the 21st century.
i was with the w3c in 98 when the techies there began to wear these AR glasses. I thought it was soooo nerdy but I also saw (glimly) that they could have a future use.
At MIT at the W3C in those days, the beginning of the voice browser was being worked on - for the blind - it was funded by the wai - web accessibility initiative at MIT - and they KNEW the commercial app for the sighted would be huge- in autos and so on...
so many little gadgets come out that are marginallly useful, like pedometers and other wearables and such but then when you combine a smart phone with variously sized smart tablets as they've done here, you can see how our lives can be made both more complex and easier with AR.
:O)
Miniaturization and volume (at the consumer level) bring down the unit cost of this stuff. The presence of an "information infrastructure" is a prerequisite. Standards have to be agreed upon. And privacy concerns have to be dealt with, or simply ignored, as they seem to be much of the time today.
And mandates help force technology adoption: for example, a new exit was built on a tollway near here. Unlike other exits, this one requires the use of an "I-Pass" transponder. If all you have is cash (even exact change), you're not allowed to exit--you have to drive on to the next exit.
My daughter in Atlanta talks about similar exits. These are the future.
yes, the cost goes down.
thank goodness the w3c is the standards body for technology, headquartered at MIT, France and Japan and has other offices. I worked for them in 98 and still get their newsletter.
All the tech companies are members and they all produce papers for comment and such to the working groups to make sure that their technology is useful to all concerns and that it adheres to standards.
Thanks for sharing with Gather's Luminous Writers and Artists.
On the other hand, something else has happened. In many vocations, efficiency and productivity has actually decreased. In journalism, for example, where the human creativity, intellect, and discipline are paramount, irrespective of technology available, it takes at least five people to accomplish in one day what a single person could do 50 years ago.
This, of course, is why it is nearly impossible to predict how we will live and what future inventions might actually be. The decisive factor is human nature, regardless of the technology available.
Thank you for the delightful post, Kathryn!
How so? 50 years ago, it took an assignment editor, a reporter, a copy editor and the entire typesetting and printing room to produce a single article from that reporter, not to mention the entire newspaper.
After the mid 70s, when hot metal switched to cold type (typesetting to computers), many typesetters were laid off (newspapers went on strike, like the NYT for example) and it only took the following people to produce a story:
Assignment editor, reporter, copy desk editor and press operator who ran the press. The responsibility for writing quality, clarity and space in the news hole was the responsibility of the copy desk and the reporter.
Approximately 1/3 of the staff became unnecessary.
Now people can produce their own instant online newspapers, i.e., blogs. One person, plus the hosting company.
I do think McLuhan was right when he said we would be all global villages. This was in the early 60s and it has now become true.
People who predict greater isolation for humanity are not always right, because even though we do have huge numbers of people working toute seule as a remote worker or freelancer, the fact that people are social creatures = wired to be social = means that we will always find a way to 'gather together' and 'facebook' and 'tweet' to our hearts content.
Just like this, typical of Gather (intermediary) I had to copy the above, refresh the screen and repaste to make this happen (assuming it will even happen this time) just a bit of extra frustration and lost time and effort ... :-(
But I was referring to individual productivity. It often takes one individual and a photographer several days to complete a feature story.
My dad could both get the pictures and knock out a story in one morning!
(You and my dad worked for the same publisher for a time....)
I really wonder about the amount of total staff being 1/3 nowadays....I would like to see some figures on that one!
Do we keep in mind that there are many people behind the scenes who are contracted by a publisher to keep the newspaper going? If anything, the unseen number of people involved in publishing a newspaper may have grown.
Long ago, one could use a simple typewriter for an indefinite period of time. No programmers, no upgrading, no repairman, no troubleshooters--you get my drift?
In other media: Compare the length of credits at the end of a movie in today's world with that of a movie made in the 1940's.
No complaints here...Just observation!
Unless of course, we create more children in "augmented reality."
Test-tube babies ---To Go! ~~
...or we can simply pretend to have children!
'we create more children in "augmented reality."
Test-tube babies ---To Go! ~~ a great sci fi film!
...or we can simply pretend to have children! ---- hear hear!
''It often takes one individual and a photographer several days to complete a feature story.
My dad could both get the pictures and knock out a story.''
well if you are talking about a glossy weekly mag, like nyt magazine, yes it takes a few days. Features do take awhile.
I do remember working with the photog --and he went back early to the darkroom -- ... yes, it was quick.
i still have my olympia manual, but wish i still had the royal!!..
cast of movies - staff supporting etc... and staff of newspapers etc..
yes, things shift. big hollywood movies were 'casts of thousands '.... and now there are dozens/hundreds who make the special effects; on location filming and so on... and so forth..
standard examiner? or globe and mail? ... which one was your dad at? or montreal gazette? that ole ben founded...
My comments are somewhat distorted by my limited view but some are based upon some of the observations of my dad. (One of the editors for the Ogden Standard Examiner.)
After letting a few things of what has been said sink in, I still believe in the adage: Keep it simple, stupid!
Life can get too complicated and when it does, we tend to become slaves to our technology.
Here are two little stories:
The computers go down at your local hospital; every test done in the laboratory now must be recorded twice---once on paper and then again when the computers are up again. (Not to mention the results of tests lost, which now must be redone, if they were not manually recorded...)
Enter the public library where the computers have malfunctioned. You can look through the stacks, but you cannot do research because the card catalogues no longer exist, and you will not be allowed to check out anything!
When these things happen, I thank the Almighty that I have learned this: If it is that important, it can wait!
(But try telling that to your boss sometime...I did once and it is not a pretty story!~~)
at the globe and mail - the ATEX went down nearly every day at 5 pm... we learned to remember what we'd written.
hospitals have generators and so do libraries; and let's not forget about the cloud and offline storage... etc.. but your point is well taken.
oh, i would have loved to have been there for the fireworks your boss let out!!!!!
Actually, my boss at the time just smoldered for a little while. He did not know the time required for the procedure. (New supervisor.) But I obeyed his command out of respect...and finished as soon as possible. As it turned out, what he wanted done "right away" was done and then sat on a counter at the lab for a week before he picked it up!
Your ATEX fiasco reminds me of my daughter's experience yesterday:
She had taken over an hour to write an essay for a scholarship she is applying for. She pressed the "save" button, but ...The computer somehow did not save her work. The entire essay was lost in the formidable cybersphere! To her credit, she fretted very little and then started over.
Patience is certainly a virtue!
(The answer to the seeming riddle of "Murphy's Law!)
I have friends, otherwise intelligent people that go nuts for every new reinterpretation of Nostradamus's tripe but would not be caught in public reading Robert Heinlein who PREDICTED all the crap we re going thru fifty years ago.
Birdies comment about 'Minority Report' may or may not reference back to the work of stoner/LSD/psychotic Phillip K. Dick, I don't know but he is where that [much better] original story came from in the EARLY 60's. Along with the stories that made, as a partial list, Blade Runner (1982) Based on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
Screamers (1995) Based on "Second Variety"
Total Recall (1990) Based on "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale"
Confessions d'un Barjo (French, 1992) Based on "Confessions of a Crap Artist"
Impostor (2001) Based on "Impostor."
Minority Report (2002) Based on "The Minority Report."
Paycheck (December 25, 2003) Based on "Paycheck."
A Scanner Darkly (July 7, 2006) Based on "A Scanner Darkly"
Next (April 27, 2007) Based on "The Golden Man"
The Adjustment Bureau (coming 2010) Based on "The Adjustment Team"
King of the Elves (coming 2012) Based on "King of the Elves"
And NOT A 10th of the population will do the WORK to find out what is coming next.
Yesterday one of my Google 'bots' tripped a story about a VENDING MACHINE that will be able to 1. tell your age, 2. sex, 3. REACTION to the offerings, 4. whether you [referencing all the former] paid with cash or plastic... that is NOW..
Go back to sleep, sheep, you'll find out what happens when it happens.
As for science fiction, yes it is all of what you said it was. I enjoy watching the shows and movies but rarely read it because it dehumanizes people -- political commentary or such -- just as this video presents a dehumanizes, asceticized view of life ...
Dehumanizing??? Then you are simply reading the wrong authors. Get a copy of Heinlilen's TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE.
My boss Ben Bova once said that 'Science Fiction in the movies and TV bears the same relationship to real Science Fiction that Popeye does to Naval History' and he was right.
Want a female author? Try Octavia Butler, a wonderfully smart and perceptive black lady who has written intuitive things.
Judge" all Science Fiction as "Dehumanizing" "but I would never read it." says quite about about the problem and it is not the world.
Judging is all about being right, is it not? THIS is what I was talking about I dis-remember at the moment who it was that said 'everyone wants to know more about science, but will never take a science course to find out' Sagan perhaps.
You call Star Wars Science Fiction when manifestly it is not. Star trek was ACTUALLY described to NBC as "WAGON TR4AIN TO THE STARS and allowed Roddenberry to espouse his politics but a few of the REAL writers slipped things past him. Star Wars is a 30's morality play serial that could have been set in any feudal society in medieval Europe, hell, ASIA for that matter.
meanwhile Heinlein predicted the rise of the corporations, 'brushfire wars', and the decline of marriage.
I know, having read all those authors you mention above, AS WELL as others, is that with the possible exception of Harper Lee they are not going to require you to THINK, just experience and accept. Which if you DO think about it is not a good way to live.
My two sisters - one is also ENFJ and the other is INTP and so is her husband. My father was ENTJ, Napoleon and so was my stepmother. boom. my mother was INFJ.
The Giant Ape school, of SF still predominates in the entertainment industry, where I have worked for over 45 years (I have been reading science fiction for over 55 years, and I worked on the original Star Trek series and its later offspring, and it WAS science fiction, but only of the most rudimentary, space operatic sort). One of the finest scjence fiction films ever made never makes anybody's "Best Of" list because it has nary a blaster, nary an ET, nary a Galactic Overlord. It is Charly, the 1968 adaptation of Daniel Keyes' story Flowers for Algernon. Go figure.
I read a great book - now lost -- in the 70s in a film theory class i was in at McGill - not the place for flim, but anyway, one of my few electives in an otherwise lilterary English department - and the book described the following:
video cameras - we had a super 8 at the time
video storage and retrieval on tvs
large, wall-sized tvs
telephone calls on your computer, via ISDN or similar.
split screen tvs.
So from the 70s, we have all this and more. The tech gods said, 'let there be light.' And so it was. And we saw that it was good.
holography was also fascinating in star trek... and transporters... a fabulous series. I went to the same high school in Montreal as Shatner and knew his cousin on his mother's side.
Tell her about GATTACA.
Doc, Gattaca I have not seen... there is much SF film I have not seen because if I miss it on the big screen, I am rarely interested in seeing it on the little one. Now that I have a large flatscreen TV I will give it a try.
Kathryn, if you want to read some of the most non-dehumanizing SF ever written, I commend to you the works of the late Clifford Simak, in particular his novel Way Station.
Doc, I realize that you have a reputation as a curmudgeon to maintain, but statements like "You call Star Wars Science Fiction when manifestly it is not" are not helpful in discourse; either I am so stupid, naive and incompetent not to realize that it is "manifestly" not SF, or else possibly you may be either wrong, or more likely stating an opinion rather than a matter of provable fact. I would venture to say that it is the last of these choices.
I will take a look at Simak's work. I loved Bradbury and a few other writers. I just like a lot of emotion in a novel.
For anyone using a GPS, phone, laptop and online media - the devices shown in the video are all based on things we do every day. Tap, swipe, search, copy/paste, call, etc...
Actually it's not all that exciting; it's one of those "you had to be there" events. A couple or three years ago WS was going to write his memoirs about "Star Trek". Since my late colleague Joan Pearce and I had done the E&O/authenticity/production research on the original series (as well as on most of the stuff that followed), his secretary asked us if we'd be willing to come over and talk to him, and he'd record the interview. We arrived, and sat on a couch opposite his chair, and we started in. It quickly degenerated into the sort of conversation you might have with an old friend you hadn't seen in decades, then moved off onto the dismally bad science on the show. I mentioned that the Universal Translator was my bete noire, and I explained why, which got us off onto linguistics, which is My Thing. He'd never heard of it as a scientific discipline, so I endeavored to instruct him, all the while trading off my end of the conversation with Joan, who was one of the brightest and most interesting humans I've ever met, and was a friend and colleague for almost forty years. Bill discussed "Free Enterprise" with us: "The plot for that was hatched right where you're sitting".
But it was William Shatner, one of the iconic figures of the late 20th century, and he was in full Bill Shatner mode, commanding but with a hint of confusion, and definitely a man who takes himself only slightly seriously. Actually, he takes himself seriously, he does not take his image seriously. He's a lot of fun, and I enjoyed the afternoon (it was supposed to be an hour and a half; it ran to four) immensely.
I've seen the book, but haven't read it; a cursory scan showed no references to me or Joan, but I'll have to read it eventually, as he does talk about several of my friends and acquaintances.
And by the way; Joan Pearce, now deceased, was the widow of Gerry Pearce, mentioned in my comment about the Giant Ape School of SF.
I hadn't SEEN the movie... I'd READ it - Decades ago.
Your article, by the way, is bloody marvelous. Truly excellent writing and subject presentation. I didn't need to see the video (although I did).
I sort of enjoyed the movie. Love SF movies and TV, well like them.. as for books, only Farhenheit 451.
got the video from PCWorld a week or so ago and kept looking at it, and realized I had to absorb everything in it... Have about 100 PC mags in my email folder about all the cool things and will write about the coolest of the cool at CES soon.
As for me - I am waiting for my personal computer that is wearable on my wrist & is a hologram when I turn it on ... at whatever size I need it & for whatever purpose I need it. THAT would be cool !!!!
Then if it could make a cup of java appear as I need would be the bonus!
THANK YOU FOR SHARING AT SURREAL CIRCUS!
Be Inspired
Yes, that is very true. Shows how long - about 3 or 4 decades - it takes from concept to consumer use.
40 years ago, the technology was being developed for video recording devices that we could use and play back on our TVs, split screen TVs, wall TVs, and video-phones. ...
OR
Resistance is futile prepare to be assimilated.
This technology is cool, Kathryn. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.