Augmented Reality: The Future, Then and Now
JA
February 05
There’s been much talk about the future of late, but for today’s post I thought I might tap into a slightly more abstract vein, based on two things that crossed my radar rather coincidentally earlier this week.
The first is this video by Keiichi Matsuda, entitled Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop. Matsuda is part of a group of students at London's Bartlett School of Architecture who are using animation and video to rethink our physical surrounds. His vision, needless to say, relies heavily on a growing dependence on augmented reality (basically when computer-generated imagery is overlayed with objects in the ‘real world’ to create a mixed, partly digital reality – think of the hype surrounding video games in the 1990s). Matsuda’s world is all neon colour and frenzied advertising – much like having the streets of Shinjuku cramped into your own apartment. Humans are pitifully reliant on AR instruction and social networking is an all-consuming part of the morning wake-up ritual. It is at once flashy, funny and slightly disturbing.
Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.
In contrast, the New Yorker’s Book Bench have also linked to this 1972 picture book by Geoffrey Hoyle, which imagines what life will be like 2010. Hoyle is an environmental idealist at heart – he predicts that as a result of computers allowing people to work and study at home, pollution and congestion will decrease and we will all breathe fresh clean air in a sustainable world. Sadly, not the case in 2010. There are of course the expected quirks – purchased good shipped all over the country by virtue of large pipes filled with ‘special liquid’ and airplanes that can travel at over 4000 miles per hour – but the interesting thing is the book’s overlap with Matsuda’s predictions about the morning routine. Ideas about the future in 1972, it turns out, are not so far from ideas about the future in 2010.
All the cooking is done automatically. It is controlled electronically by a small built-in computer. There is a control panel to work the cooker. It looks like a typewriter, with rows of numbered and lettered keys. To order breakfast, you spell out what you want on the control panel.
Toast pops out of the toaster and a light shows you the tea is ready… It is easy to see when your food is cooked by watching the lights above the ovens: RED for cooking, GREEN for ready, and YELLOW for keeping warm.
Also, Hoyle predicted something rather close to where we’re coming to with ebooks and online libraries, albeit with a vintage twist:
There are no books. The [library] floor is shaped into tables and benches. Built into these tables are hundreds of vision phones. The books, films, and newspapers are all stored in the library computer.
First you dial the library index. This file contains all the books that have ever been written. It does not matter whether they were first written in Chinese or French. They will be here, translated into English. There is also an index of films and newspapers… To select the book you wish to read, you dial the book’s number. The first page appears on your screen. You can turn the pages backward or forward by using buttons on the vision phone.
If you are halfway through a book and you have to leave, there is no reason why you can’t finish it when you get home. You can dial the library and the book number from home and go on with your reading.
The entire book is available online. And, in case you’re interested in more about augmented reality, have a look at this T-shirt that enables you to play rock-paper-scissors against yourself.
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