Augmented Reality Revolution
November 3rd, 2009Anselm Hook has just posted a lengthy and thoughtful article on the trend and forthcoming requirements for the emerging Augmented Reality Revolution.
The article is worth reading for all sorts of reasons, and for all sorts of people, but I’m just going to comment on the bits that caught my immediate attention.
The opening section declares:
AR is going to make it possible for us to see through walls. It will remove some of the blindness that has crept up around our industrial landscape.
I wonder how this might be applied to open government, and transparency in the corporate world, will we be able to see through the walls of our local police department? Is this another potential tool for radical reality?
Will geo-based mashups finally be able to reach us out in the world?
Anselm talks about needing ways to filter the floods of future data, but I propose we should focus on getting enough well rounded data in first, otherwise we’ll be filtering against a small, platform specific, subset. One way to encourage increased data input to the AR universe (whether it’s distributed or unified) will be to recognize AR as a natural evolution of the geoweb movement, for it to benefit from the existing momentum, to explicitly be backwards compatible with the current generation of geodata. I do however expect metadata around AR items to blossom, meaning old geodata may need to do some freshening up to stay relevant.
Regarding the discussion about a universal AR platform, I imagine there may be an open data store, with viable APIs that support a multitude of creative experiences, but I also envision a closed, all in one, walled garden player that will probably be a little later to the game, but will come out swinging with an effortless interface.
I’m left with an exciting expectation of an Augmented Reality Universe, with many evolving access methods and platform standards, a possible replacement for the web as we know it.
