Welcome to Augmented Reality

Have you ever given a second thought to the inside of Iron Man's mask? In essence the OS is a live interaction with an augmented reality system aided by intelligence from Jarvis. OK, a lot of intelligence from Jarvis. But the underlying technology is still incredible, and is fast making its way into main stream technology. Over the next few years big and small tech start ups are venturing into AR simulation development that can even run off your smart phones.

Augmented reality, first appeared on the tech scene in the mid 1990's, much later than that of its counterpart, virtual reality which was already being defined as a concept in the 1960's. However augmented reality has a lot more potential to change the way we carry about our daily lives.

The core difference from virtual reality, is that the user is not completely submerged into a new world but rather given additional visual perceptions to that of reality (like adding a transparent layer of information above reality and what you are actually seeing in the real world) and the user is still very much aware of the outside world and can interact with it accordingly. Whereas virtual reality refers to an entirely simulated, artificial environment. A computer generated digital-world in which the user is completely immersed, with a minimum of three out of our five senses being controlled and monitored by the simulation. The user cannot sense or interact with the real world outside of the simulation through their actions in the virtual world.

Which is great! and certainly entertaining, but now imagine augmented reality. Examples of which have come and gone (Google Glass) and are still being developed (See cool apps). There are an excess of use cases for the technology, from training doctors, chefs and mechanics to epic gaming abilities (think of Pokemon Go) and ALL the information in closer reach than our finger tips.

The challenges, and what actually got me to start thinking about this technology again, is firstly a genuine fear for a privacy-free future, though it may be inevitable either way. And secondly, a completely oblivious submersion into a fake/real-reality. If everyone has all of this information so readily at their disposal, that they are able to completely dilute their senses of actual reality, would augmented reality still be augmented? or would it constitute a whole new type of reality?

The video below is incredible - it showcases a few of some of the many use cases I've spoken about but also aptly illustrates my fears of the technology.

With technology like Sight, we could greatly improve the world, but at the same time is this what we are aiming for? We would be only who we choose to be perceived as, as we are on our social media posts except now we would be transforming our digital personas into our living, walking, breathing, interacting personas. Above that, instead of empowering ourselves through information, we would be giving so much power, of all of our information and senses, to so few people, we wouldn't even know that we aren't free.

Please feel free to post your thoughts below - would love to hear from you.