Where will augmented reality (AR) - and the current crop of AR apps, eventually lead us? While many are sceptical about its benefit, surely AR's indicative of a push towards some form of hybridised digital/physical world? Pranav Mistry, in a recent TED talk (video above), provides perhaps the most convincing vision of where we may end up - with some frankly jaw-dropping technology demonstrations.
What's interesting about this 'sixth sense' idea though, is that rather than simply making you go 'oooh' at the tech, you can actually being to understand how this would be useful and valuable in real life - geniunely bringing the physical and digital worlds together.
Crucially (and unlike AR right now) it means that we don't face a future walking round looking through tiny screens either - which is encouraging. Suddenly, anything is a screen, but as Pranav suggests towards the end of the video, what's really interesting is that this potentially helps us to:
"get rid of the digital divide, but it helps us to stay human - and not just be machines, sitting in front of other machines".
Amen to that. Best of all though, Pranav plans to make the software to do this open source... watch this space. Things could get really interesting.
Posted by Joseph Simpson on 23rd November 2009
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