How do we know what is real? Augmented reality

When people think of augmented reality they think of the future – possibilities that are beyond our current technological abilities.  When I first watched the Star Wars movies long ago, talking to each other via hologram seemed only possible in the Empire.  This, in a technical sense, allowed two people to communicate in different spatio-temporal areas; allowing people to communicate and exist in both space and time.  The idea of communicating through a hologram always seemed a distant idea only possible in the cinema; however this all changed in 2008 when American news program CNN did the first TV interview via hologram during Obama’s Presidential election with celebrity Will I Am.  See the video here.  Watching the video, I still find it amazing that this type of interview process is becoming a possible option in the media.

The concept of augmented reality is also coming to the fore, as Chris Grayson describes, for economic purposes in the retail industry.  Ray-ban has a virtual mirror on its website that allows you to try on virtual glasses and similarly Holiten with jewellery and glasses.  There are other augmented reality technologies designed for the retail sector that will soon be a possibility in Australia; one example is the Intellefit Body Scanner.  The Intellefit body scanner allows customers to step inside a chamber where radio waves scan the person’s fully clothes body in 10 seconds with the scanner collecting more than 200,000 body measurements.  A video of this can be seen here.

Since the emerging possibility of augmented reality we are now seeing a convergence with mobile and mobile with eye wear.  There are apps on an iPhone such as the digital compass which makes itself aware of its longitude and latitude coordinates.  At the end of this year we will also see another futuristic device, similar to that only previously possible in The Terminator movies.  Google is set to release augmented reality glasses that will run on the Android platform.  These glasses will contain a low resolution camera that will look at what the wearer is seeing and overlay it with information about surrounding buildings and friends.  Other features include; 3G or 4G data connection, sensors and GPS. An article on this can be read here.

Augmented reality technologies have developed at a fast pace and are slowly becoming integrated into everyday life.  Mychilo S. Cline worries about this stating; the more time in virtual space, there will be a gradual migration to virtual space, resulting in important changes in economics, world view and culture.

Sources used for this blog post:

Anon. (n.d.) ‘Virtual Reality’, Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality> (one of the better entries)

Grayson, Chris (2009) ‘Augmented Reality Overview’, GigantiCo <http://gigantico.squarespace.com/336554365346/2009/6/23/augmented-reality-overview.html>

Ionescu, Daniel (2012), PC World, http://www.pcworld.com/article/250453/google_augmented_reality_glasses_expected_by_years_end.html

A Current Affair (2010), http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=7947796