This afternoon, I participated in an online conference (I refuse to call it a “webinar”) sponsored by ALA TechSource, covering technology issues that came up during ALA’s 2010 Midwinter meeting. It was a lot of fun, and I have to say, it felt good to reconnect with the profession a bit. I should do more of these while I’m looking for library work.
The topics were many and varied, from ebooks to mobile discovery tools, from open source to API’s. One topic in particular, however, is near and dear to me: augmented reality. This term is still new enough that many reading this may not know what it means; the best definition I’ve heard is from MIT educational technology professor Eric Klopfer, who calls it “a digital layer of information spatially overlaid on the real environment”. A good, though rough, example might be Google Earth, which takes the physical world and adds all kinds of spatial information onto it, such as roads, political and economic data, and user data as well–right down to decent places to eat.
The reason I call Google Earth a rough example, however, is that normally “augmented reality” refers to seeing the data on top of the real world, or at least at the same time. Usually this means using a location-aware mobile device to add information to whatever you happen to be looking at. The best current example of that might be Layar, an Android and iPhone app that uses your phone’s camera, GPS, compass and accelerometer to figure out exactly where the camera is and how it’s oriented, and can then show you the same view with added data from a variety of sources.
That might sound confusing, so here’s Layar’s first promotional video, from last summer. It’s still a pretty good introduction.
And the latest version adds 3D graphics, which leads to such weirdness as this:
Which may seem silly, but imagine the possibilities. Moving your car navigation system to your windshield, for example, and having it show you where to go by projecting arrows right on the street in front of you. (Of course, transparent display technology isn’t quite there yet, but it soon will be.) Or, if you’re looking for a restaurant, simply pointing your phone down the street and having it color-code every restaurant it can see according to the reviews it’s gotten.
Or–and this is where I think it gets really exciting–games. Or artworks (like the Beatles image currently on the Layar home page). Or historical images. What did that Scottish castle over there look like when it was new?
Perhaps the most exciting possibility of all is social data. Currently, this is a fairly cumbersome thing to do with these tools, but it can and will become easier. I’ve seen one example lately. I’ve been playing around with a Chinese mapping tool called City8, which gives street-level views of a number of Chinese cities. It’s very similar to Google Street View. But what’s most interesting to me is that they make it very easy for people to add informative placemarks and share them. The following video shows how easily it can be done (in Chinese, subtitled in English; the shared placemarks are at about 1:25):
There’s no reason Google couldn’t do the same, and I wish they’d copy it. Imagine having this kind of social data, combined with Layar’s locational awareness and 3D graphics, all at your fingertips.
As usual, science fiction writers have been the first ones to think about the implications of this. In Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End, people are able to subscribe to seamless virtual-reality environments that completely replace their view of the world–and yet still allow them to interact with the rest of us. William Gibson’s Spook Country has augmented reality artworks–recreating famous crime scenes in the actual locations where the crimes took place. And in Charles Stross’ Halting State, these technologies have grown to be an accepted part of the everyday landscape, with everyone from police to spies to hackers using them routinely to collect information at all times.
Of course, the world usually turns out to be far weirder than even SF writers can imagine, especially when it comes to a technology as potentially disruptive as this. Prediction is a dangerous business. But personally, I can’t wait to get my hands on this stuff (oh, for the day I trade my Palm for an Android!), and I’m looking forward to seeing what applications people come up with.
