Media Technology, Part 1: Augmented Reality, ideas for the future

Augmented Reality (AR) mobile application facial recognition allows people to hold up their Smartphones and see icons floating around anyone someone’s head! So, you can pass someone on the street, hold up your iPhone to them, and it will search websites (flickr, facebook, etc.) for their pictures. Once its pinpointed that person, through your iphone video camera, you’ll be able to see icons of, for example, their LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, business card, etc ‘floating’ above and around their head. Wild, right?

See

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/augmented_id_augmented_reality_facial_recognition.php

So how about if a brand, say Tommy Hilfiger for example, invited people to pull the TH logo onto their displayed ‘floating’ icons. “Are you Polo? Then show the world!” Some campaign like that. So then, you have people becoming their own personal racecar hoods/doors, with many different logos and brands associated with that individual person! Creepy.

From that, maybe that brand could be collecting photos of people on the street that have opted-in to the brand’s floating logo. If a particularly attractive man or woman was found wearing that product’s clothes and captured in an appealing pose, maybe Brand X could contact that person saying, ‘You have what it takes to be a Banana Republic model! We’d love to use this photo of you for future ads. Click here if you’d like to be our next BR model and we’ll send you $100” or something like that. I’d imagine the legal terms on using this person’s likeness/ image would be miles deep, but- basically you’d be allowing everyone in the world to feel like a model for their favorite brands.

Also, people will be able to take on Augmented Reality personalities much more so than they currently do in RPGs like Second Life or World of Warcraft. A member of these games will be able to create an avatar for themselves, to be seen by someone else through AR. So, when a AR screen recognizes another person, the user will not see the human, but that person’s character (ex. A wizard or warrior, etc.). Through the screen, we could potentially be walking around in ‘cartoon-world’ in just a few years. What also might be neat/possible is to alter someone’s voice through their selected avatar. This would require someone using an AR screen to also have AR headphones, although I’m not sure if these have been created yet. So, the person choosing a wizard or warrior or whatever might decide that his avatar has a deep, scary, Scottish accent for example. Along with selecting the look of his character, he would also be able to select a voice that would be digitally rendered through the AR headphones. Wow. Again, very creepy stuff here that seems like it might be possible and not too far away.

Augmented Reality will also be able to take off from the new ‘tablet’ technologies from Apple or Freescale. Rather than have an actual electric screen, soon we will be able to carry around a small, lightweight board with a computer system inside, but no screen. Through AR glasses, we will be able to see a screen projected onto this flat board and even be able to interact with the image itself. The glasses will sense our hand movements on specific keys, links, or tools and, after a few versions to perfect the technology, will become very natural and ‘real’ for the user. The next phase a few years down the road after this is being able to carry around a computer on your shoulder or backpack, while no tablet at all is needed. With our redesigned AR glasses, we will be able to project a ‘screen’ in front of our eyes. We will be able to push and pull windows and tools, applications and programs, ‘keyboards’ and ‘mouses’ in and out of our line of vision, everything in front of us interactive. People will be able to look at each other’s ‘screens’ by looking at another person’s AR glasses and syncing up (much like the iPhone bump). Then, both glasses will be able to view the same AR screen.