I love the concept of augmented reality. I mean, isn’t watching Avatar in 3D Imax so much better than the gray reality when you come home to look at your walls?
Don’t you love the colors! – and can’t you feel your muscles twitching as you mentally jump from psychedelically colored palm frond to palm frond along with the Navi? When I got home after the movie, all I could do is stare at my (boring) walls and wonder “where are my white floating squids?” Uch. Reality is tough, gray, cold – well, “real”.
But seriously, I think augmented reality has the potential to be the next mass (and I mean, MASS) addiction after social networking.
Currently every discussion around it seems to focus on the information it will bring…as interesting as it would be to have directions overlaid onto my wanderings (directly into my retina, or indeed – the optic nerve at some point) I think another obvious application is more akin to gaming in nature.
Imagine you’re just in one of those moods, and instead of having to look at all the “regular” faces you pass on the street (gray, dour) you could instead decide that today is “sea monkey day”. Seriously, you’re in the mood for sea monkeys. So you program your “sea monkey setting” into your yet-to-be-determined data input module and voila! Everyone has a sea monkey head.
It’s the ultimate version of beer goggles.
The program could generate facial differences by interpolating from real faces, or by pulling data from various public profiles (the sentiment analysis of your current Facebook status interpolates: “bad mood”) and an unhappy (but potentially, comical) Sea Monkey face is projected. Etc. etc. You get the picture.
An additional idea would be being able to set your own markers so that AR programs interpret your data in a certain way that day. In a flirty mood / want to chat? Advertise with a certain color (how about, green face = available). We could color code the world and communicate without any words at all. After all, if our information from a wide variety of sources is going to be broadcast anyway (ref: http://lindaricci.com/01/04/not-just-a-pretty-face), why not control what we put out there in this way?
This could be seriously addictive. And seriously lucrative from an entertainment merchandising standpoint. Think about it: Now I don't have to just leave the Navi behind when I get home, I can superimpose licensed Navi images on my whole day. All I need is some giant pond fronds (why not my office chair??)
It makes sense as part of the “personalization” trend: everyone wants (information) how they want it, in the way they want it. How difficult is it to imagine that this will also include superimposing our own desires for what “reality” will look like that day?
Once it happens would you ever go back to just seeing things the way they “are”? I don’t think so.
Facial recognition software has had a huge influx of cash and interest since 9/11 for security reasons. It's here, it's improving, and pretty soon anonymity will be completely obsolete, if it's not already - at least to the companies who use it to scan airport passengers, law enforcement, and others who have made it a goal.
We live in an era where an overwhelming amount of data exists on each of us, from our social networking connections and comments, to our shopping habits at the supermarket. Cell phone usage, online searches, cookies on sites visited, credit card purchases - all of these create data which builds a picture of who we are.
But currently, these are still siloed. The grocery store isn't matching your checkout purchases with your Pandora list and identifying friends of yours on Twitter who are most likely to share your taste, then using the data to target them with advertising.
One of these days, though, facial recognition software will be one of the links connecting the dots between who you are with other data points such as your FB profile, and your Pandora list. At that point, if someone wants to know who that cute guy sitting at the next table is all they will have to do is take his picture - and know who he is, what music he likes, his address (courtesy of whitepages.com), books he's bought (thanks to amazon.com), his house value (zillow.com), online subscriptions, health risks based on his grocery purchases, etc etc. Spokeo.com and a few others are baby steps towards data aggregation - crude, often incorrect, and using identifiers which are imprecise, but it is the next logical step in data mining: analysis crossing across collection points, as opposed to little ponds.
This scenario - inevitable as it is - obviously has many potential pitfalls. It's great for companies (I'd advise anyone with a talent for numbers to consider a career in data modeling!), but is a mixed bag for consumers. The privacy issues are obvious, but those aside, the personalization that the market increasingly is demanding is impossible without data mining and developing good predictive capabilities. On the one hand people are uncomfortable with their data being gathered (not like this wasn't always happening -- it's just more extensive now), and on the other, good data mining will ensure that people are targeted with offers and services that are interesting and relevant to them.
It's a teetering tightrope walk. As a business strategist / consultant, I work with clients to develop strategies to take advantage of all that is legal, effective, and (personally) always try to do so with integrity. As consumers we should be trying to influence privacy legislation, to ensure that this future is one that not only makes our lives easier, but does so safely. The challenge is that data knows no national boundaries, so what effect will legislation be able to have? I don't have the answer, only want to add to the discussion.
I'm intrigued by a pet observation that's been swirling and coalescing in my little head lately: namely, the internet - an instant platform for all our own little opinions and soapboxes - has made us all think we're important. Way too important, actually. The digital world has given us our proverbial "15 minutes of fame" - except, when everyone have a loud opinion, perversely none count, and the soapbox isn't 15 minutes, but forever.
It used to be that you knew your relative importance in the world - possibly you shared your opinion with friends, family, some co-workers (probably not), you might have been a big fish in your own teeny weeny pond, and indeed, some managed to develop extraordinary egos just on that alone. But on the whole there was a small audience and you knew you weren't all that important. For better or worse, people believed in authority and respected it.
But now, with a built in "audience" (x number of facebook/twitter "friends"!) you start to believe in your own importance. You imagine that your audience gives a rat's patooty about what you think, and all of a sudden that ego that your parents worked so hard to quelch, train, and curb, has been given a venue to run wild.
People are commenting on every article being published; they have to share their opinions, because in their mind, it's important that other people hear them. They are sharing their music lists, their favorite entertainment sources, their political advice - all of their proverbial intellectual DNA. Somehow, people are starting to believe that their <fill in the blank> is important. Drinking their own Kool-Aid.
The result of all this can be seen with the furor over the Wikileaks scandal. The point is not whether you agree this is a good thing or not, but what's interesting to me is that we've moved as a society to a point where everyone feels they have a "right" to know everything. Which is a direct result of the move towards a seemingly egalitarian society, because everyone has a say (dammit!) and an audience, inflating their sense of importance.
Just another example of how the digital world is impacting on our "real" society and human psychology. Entitled might be the best word of all.
What's going to happen as we increasingly all feel so important? => Combined with increasing personalization, and how spoiled we are getting from getting everything delivered immediately, I'm predicting a world of individual narcissists all operating on their own little self regulated "islands". Which raises all sorts of interesting thought "vectors"...mostly around individual serving sized food right now (I'm hungry).
But also around the challenges brands and products (two different things) will have in reaching people, and influencing them; we are truly moving from a "push" marketing model to an engagement one, and the companies that don't understand how to be invited and embed themselves in consumers' lives will fail. Seamless operating integration between various technologies (hardware, connectivity, content) will be imperative to ensure that consumers keep you permanently in their lives. And then partnering with synergistic content, to deliver "package" experiences to consumers receptive to your product/service. I definitely think the era of the stand alone brand is ending.
But ironically, all this partnering and invisible web weaving will reduce your actual choices. Which is why I previously said "seemingly" egalitarian. But you won't know it, because you'll be feeling very important.
