Laying a Digital Map Over the World

Imagine you are walking down your town's own version of Main St., a bustling row of shops and restaurants lie before you. You walk up to the window of a Barnes & Noble and, using nothing more than a wear-able computing device on your fingertips. In just a few short hand motions, you can browse through the latest book and DVD releases or simply search for the best deals in the store. After walking through the periodicals section for a while, you pick up a magazine and a video clip plays over an image of the cover story. Programs like MIT's SixthSense are showing how augmented reality applications are rapidly making their way into reality, as described in a BBC article by Jane Wakefield.

For people like TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld, the current technological trend is out with the VR and in with the AR. In an earlier article I looked at how mobile GPS programs could be used for advertising purposes, notifying someone of nearby store deals and commercials. Augmented reality will provide similar services but, in my opinion, be more socially engaging and feel less intrusive. The premise of augmented reality is that you interact with the world using the latest digital information compilers and projected graphic interfaces, instead of having bits of advertisement thrown at you. How is AR engaging?

With programs like SixthSense, users can overlay digital information on objects like books and newspapers, revising the power of paper and the printed word. This way you can have a book narrated to you as you read it, in addition to finding reviews of that book or resell prices on Amazon. Simply look at an article about Obama's latest healthcare meeting and see a video clip from the event play out in a projected form on the paper. Anywhere you go, you can see information without some sort of monitor or screen.

Also, instead of having advertisements thrown at you, you can search the deals yourself by pointing your cellphone at a certain store, restaurant, or other place of interest. You choose the information and advertising you're interested in by choosing the store yourself.

Also, the gaming possibilities seem endless. You can work with an object in the real world while projecting digital graphic interfaces over it to create games such as the Parrot AR Drone for the iPhone. You can manipulate objects in the real world in a virtual world merely by directly communicating with an iPhone. Technology like this has made Avatar, James Cameron's latest hit, possible by picking up motion data from a real object and interpreting it in a digital world with digital imagery. Whether you're a gamer or an avid shopper, it seems that pretty soon our digital interactions with the world might require nothing more than a headband and piece of paper.