Augmented Reality & The Future

The continuous advancement of technology means our lives become efficient and easier to manage on a daily basis. There is technology that we can do without, such as a toilet seat with built-in Wi-Fi. Or a dinner plate that counts your calories (Um, actually, a friend of mine could use this). And there is technology that if we didn't have, we’d be sent back to the Stone Age – this is the simple cell=phone, GPS Navigation, or even the World Wide Web.

Point is, every consumer has their preferences and judging would not be my right; but every now and then an innovative piece of technology is introduced to us that causes quite a stir.

Augmented Reality

Here the spotlight shines. For those who missed our previous blogs on our website, AdStuck, this is a fast track explanation on what augmented reality technology generally is:

“This technology, using one’s device-display, displays a layer of digital information/data over the natural environment to help explain what you’re looking at in a more understanding way”.

Examples could be pointing at a train station with the AR technology helping you make out which entrance to head for when catching a Sleeper after a certain time period. Or pointing at a plate of food and deciphering out all its natural ingredients. There are numerous uses that AR simply brings to us.    

The Future

A time will come when an entire city can be augmented through the view of one’s office window. Consumers will be incredibly tech savvy to a point it becomes unnatural to do things naturally. This could also be a potential disadvantage of augmented reality since it can lead to over-dependence and probably less human employment e.g. A group of tourists relying on AR apps instead of the actual tour guide. And there are the issues of privacy – just imagine pointing the AR-enabled camera at a person’s face, revealing all their social networking site memberships and anything else that can be found online.

However, the positives of AR will always outweigh its controversies – it’s just up to us to control how much we make available to the general public, I guess. The advantages are simply too much to even think about halting this beautiful process of AR’s evolution into our lives.

See, I am no expert on Augmented Reality’s full capabilities – hell, I myself was just introduced to this wonderful technology this year. But I’ll tell you this:

                                             THIS IS THE FUTURE.

A Breakthrough - Augmented Reality technology

Have you ever wondered why technology advances in a progressive form? Why is that we couldn’t have invented certain things we have today twenty years ago? Does this mean we are becoming smarter with time? But then Einstein, Newton, etc. were arguably the smartest living souls to have graced Mother Earth, right? And they lived decades ago and still set the standard of a lot of scientific practices today. I always wonder why exactly certain things have to be invented in a certain period of the future and not now. It could be most probably due to building upon trial-and-error research and development. Or lack of certain alloys. Or simply lack of certain materials. Who knows?

    

Project Glass

 

Innovation is out there – it will always be. There are companies that set a mesmerizing standard for others to follow with their incredible attention-to-detail in R&D. A few of these corporations could be Apple, Microsoft, most Japanese vehicle manufacturers, Samsung and maybe to a point, Sony. Another one is Google. A pioneer in search technology, most other products they release also perform surprisingly well with consumers. From Google Translate to Google Tracks, you name it – they almost always set a standard for a product released.

       

And one product they’re going to release is Google Glasses. Based on Augmented Reality technology, the glasses’ lenses display information as an AR-enabled smartphone would and it can interact with the internet using the wearer’s voice commands. All this coupled with the Android OS. And it works just as a smartphone using augmented reality – look at something, and a live data feed will send digital information onto the lens’ display showing you what you’re looking at, and where you are, if GPS is activated. Brilliant, isn’t it? (especially considering the minimalist appearance).

Releases would take place this year and even though it’s still in its beta stage, the stir it’s causing is sensational. Simply sensational.

Google will most likely hit a home run again.

I’m just wondering how in the world did they manage to fit all these features onto a pair of glasses?

 

Is Reality Enough?

Come on guys…Why do we always have to mess around with Mother Nature, huh? Hasn’t She had enough manipulation? Can we not appreciate her for all that She has and isn’t that enough? Do we always have to add onto her? Well…APPARENTLY WE DO!

A good enough reason to keep on doing this is a relatively fresh, new and exciting digital technology called “Augmented Reality”.

Now, you’ve all heard of different kinds of software technology helping to make life easier and more efficient in so many ways: from something as simple as a Widget (or Gadget as it’s called on PCs), to complex RSS Feeds such as the now ‘going-to-shut-down’ Google Reader.

These ‘taken-for-granted’ technologies have made retrieving data and information a piece of cake and we are at a stage when we simply cannot do without them; that’s why there are so many alternatives out there to cater to most demographics. But these are all purely digital – they have their own worlds of information.

This is where the exciting and simplistic charisma of Augmented Reality kicks in. This is a kind of digital technology that, through real-life image detection, adds extra information to our ‘view’ of the natural world.

Assuming you own a tablet or at least a smartphone (if you didn’t, you’d be considered a caveman in this modern era) that is AR-capable. Now, activate the AR application on the smartphone and point it’s camera to, say, that post-box across you. Or the huge office complex behind you.Suddenly you realize that’s not a post-box, but a parking meter with information saying the current charges are $1/hr; and the flowers growing near that nice-looking home are actually a very rare species found in Africa, and finally the office complex behind you is that of a company called AdStuck – and more onscreen data shows its business actually involves the production of Augmented Reality technology!

This, my friends, is just the beginning of an explanation to something very exciting to come…