I’ve posted before about the advent of Augmented Reality. Bruce Sterling has been all over this as well. Today he posted about this fucking awesome video by Keiichi Matsuda, a student at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London.
Here’s what Matsuda had to say about the video:
The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.
Here’s the video:
This shows a pretty freakin’ accurate look at how our kids are going to be seeing the world around them in the fairly near future. I’m gonna be trying to hold together my damaged synapses long enough to be able to experience this myself and not run away screaming like some old fogey from a past century – which I am – and instead plunge my face deep into that bucket of apples and see what I can come up with.
As I noted before, there will be commercial noise in the AR world as every form of information struggles to gain our attention. The systems we employ to diffuse, arrange, organize and otherwise control this flood of sensorial data will be vital to our existence. Like learning to tune out the noise of a busy city street and still function as a human being – our minds and attendant culture will be adaptable to the cause.
Hard for those us who are not digital natives – (I hate that fucking term) – to conceive of ever being able to survive under such a continuous barrage over overlaid visual and aural stimulation. And yet the most basic of extended communications skills we employ today would have been mind warping to anyone who lived a mere 100 years ago.
This kind of immersive, technological, self-imposed evolution is inevitable and being able to see such forward-thinking examples of what might be will help us prepare for what we need to accomplish as we ease ourselves into the hot bath water of information overload in the years ahead. The further reaches of where we are going with all this is to have a similar experience that involves massive and simultaneous communication with others around the globe – pressing our faces not just against the glass of the candy store window but through the glass of the screen – allowing our senses of the world and our sense of self to merge with the greater shared mind of the net.
Oh yeah – and still retain our individuality and our sanity.
Can we do it?
Or is this just another thing we’re most likely to fuck up?
Cheers.
P. S. I particularly liked the use of the Honest Ed’s ad on the dish washer door.
