Loosely Assembled » tech

The Experiential Turbulence of Self-Centered Augmented Reality #are2010

fekaylius — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:45:43 +0000

Just like most of the web, and many newer technologies, Augmented Reality is a self centered experience, focusing on the discrete interaction between the tech and one user. But, unlike the web, AR aspires to be a deeply integrated overlay on the real, shared, communal world, a view into the hidden, a new array of human senses. There is severe experiential turbulence where these two perspectives come together.

Observation changes things. This we find even in the fundamentals of our physical world through research like the double-slit experiment. We also know this anecdotally in many areas, one example being that surveillance cameras are supposed to deter crime, that we act differently if we know we are being watched.

Interaction also changes things, anyone who shares a home or office with another human realizes that objects don’t always stay in the exact spot you last saw them. Other people interact with the world in your absence, a lot, sometimes eroding and depreciating, but sometimes adding, contributing and improving. Most systems in the physical world don’t reset themselves just for you. Video games, and then the web, on the other hand discovered that these customized, personal experienced could easily be created just for you. Countless people could read the same book or document at the same time without making it unavailable to anyone else, or could start a fresh game of pac man without worrying about other instantiations of the ghost infested mazes. The notion of scarcity-free on-demand experience found a way into our cultural bloodstream.

But sometimes we still want the social experience. We still have certain reasons to watch a movie in a dark room full of strangers, we still flock to music festivals, sporting events, and shopping malls to rub elbows and bump egos.

My proposal is that the Augmented Reality movement take into account the ways in which shared social interaction with digital assets might be used to enhance understanding, access, and hedonic quality within the augmented views of the world. If you interact with something, there are cases where I should experience the changes you made. These notions are already central to many online social gaming experiences like Second Life, where my actions do have effects on the other inhabitants, or on the environment. What can the AR community learn from these scenarios?

Sometimes it’s nice to listen to music together, and to know that those around you, or at least to know who among those around you, are hearing the same music as you. A dance party with everyone listening to their own layers of unsynchronized sounds is not likely to be a transcendent experience.

The Radiated Library and The Televised Book

fekaylius — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:57:24 +0000

How have people organized information over the centuries, and millennia? Are we predisposed toward more ‘linear’ or more ‘digital’ forms? How long have we been trying to cope with the problem of information overload? Are hierarchical trees a fundamental paradigm rooted in our own reproduction? How many times has the internet already been invented? How can we reinvent it again? How can we get enough distance from it to see it clearly?

In the 1890s and 1900s Paul Otlet designed and built a network where organized data could be explored, via “links” and a “web”.

via information architect and writer Alex Wright during a particularly good SALT lecture.

Augmented Reality Revolution

fekaylius — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:52:16 +0000

Anselm 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.

Is Immersivity Worth It?

fekaylius — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:54:42 +0000

Seems like they should have created the demo with an AR app so that he can actually look through the phone’s camera into his own physical space.

via @paigesaez

Virtual Brain

fekaylius — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:44:11 +0000

“Can we have it look at a picture? Can we have it listen to a piece of music? Can we have it show emotion? Can we have it get sick?” he says. “When you impose damage or disease, how does the virtual brain recover from a stroke? How does it deal with Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease?”

Read the article

Interface Human

fekaylius — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:40:40 +0000

Touch screen mechanical turk tabletop pc performance artist!

(Via @caseorganic.)

Going Beyond VIDEO_TS

fekaylius — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:00:29 +0000

Due to the iPhone/iPod craze, many recently released DVDs have been including H.264/MPEG-4 versions of the content that can simply be dragged over into iTunes, eliminating the need for all kinds of special software to copy, convert and compress the original DVD video. The industry has exhibited a rare spark of intelligence in this matter, leveraging the new use case scenario to sell special ads targeted at gadget lovers (yes the H.264 version are wrapped in ads, but can be easily circumvented, even in iMovie). The industry is banking on the convenience and time saving feature of this new product line, realizing that most people won’t spend upwards of 2 hours editing and encoding movies just to avoid a few minutes of ads.

Go forth and watch movies :D