Nick Carr points us to an article in the Economist on Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality is the stuff of science fiction. In the extreme case, think about sitting in your living room, but what you see around you isn’t real, but an immersive virtual world projected on to your real world. While that scenario, AKA the Holodeck, is the stuff of science fiction, Augmented Reality is actually become, for want of a better word, reality.
There are any number of applications, but I would like to consider scientific applications. Take the sims that Jean-Claude Bradley has built on Drexel Island. If you could present them to students as Augmented Reality there would be a level of tangibility that a virtual world, given the limitations of a computer screen, cannot provide. The example of surgeons using Augmented Reality to project images onto bodies to assist in surgery is an early example of the medical applications. Going from the current examples to imaging doesn’t take a huge leap of faith.
Augmented Reality is still in very early days and might never catch on, other than some very niche, specialized applications, but I suspect that will not be the case. Of course, I also envision seeing some cliched Hollywood movies about projecting your dreams onto the real world (wait, I think I’ve already seen more than one).
Augmented Reality
Nick Carr points us to an article in the Economist on Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality is the stuff of science fiction. In the extreme case, think about sitting in your living room, but what you see around you isn’t real, but an immersive virtual world projected on to your real world. While that scenario, AKA the Holodeck, is the stuff of science fiction, Augmented Reality is actually become, for want of a better word, reality.
There are any number of applications, but I would like to consider scientific applications. Take the sims that Jean-Claude Bradley has built on Drexel Island. If you could present them to students as Augmented Reality there would be a level of tangibility that a virtual world, given the limitations of a computer screen, cannot provide. The example of surgeons using Augmented Reality to project images onto bodies to assist in surgery is an early example of the medical applications. Going from the current examples to imaging doesn’t take a huge leap of faith.
Augmented Reality is still in very early days and might never catch on, other than some very niche, specialized applications, but I suspect that will not be the case. Of course, I also envision seeing some cliched Hollywood movies about projecting your dreams onto the real world (wait, I think I’ve already seen more than one).
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