No Permission

We’ve been living with a sort of Augmented Reality for a while now. But the next generation of AR, with always-on, real-time information will be a transformative technology.

The most common conceptions of AR applications thus far seem to be about data presentation. This makes sense as it’s a domain with clear value and with relatively clear implementation paths. There’s a good deal of sifting to do to find the data people want, but the how of the process is relatively straight-forward. We’ll see a lot of applications along these lines, and some may well change lives for the better.

There’s a subset of the data presentation applications that will be of particular interest, those that show and encourage social connections. Identifying who’s who and their relationships to each other has both commercial and societal value. There will be legal and ethical issues here, but demand will be high enough to make it worth working through them. Existing social networks should lead the way, if they have enough vision.

There’s also the gaming domain, and I have no doubt the game developers will charge head on into AR as quickly as they can. Transforming people’s environments into gaming arenas will have an irresistible appeal for many. There’s much promise in this area, and a great deal of fun to be had.

But what’s the flip side of that equation? It’s turning people’s games into their environments. And why stop there? Why not turn movies into people’s environments? Why not storytelling in general?

What if the characters of the story lived where you lived? If they experienced the things you experienced? How much more charged could the emotions of the story become? How much more tightly bound to the characters would you become?

One of the main purposes of creative projects is to alter the way people experience the world. What better way to do that than to alter the way people experience the world? Clever AR storytelling could shape experiences and places in ways that transformed the experiencer. New ways of seeing, new ways of knowing, new ways of being.

It’s a long road from here to there, but I do believe in the end it will be the artists who make the biggest impact with Augmented Reality tools. It’s really just a matter of time.