Augmented Reality's Disruptive Potential

pbahra writes "A company called Layar, based in Amsterdam, is working on products that take augmented reality in a slightly different direction. They provide a platform that allows anyone to build an AR app. Consider these ideas: you can use your mobile phone's camera to view the world; your phone knows where you are and what you are looking at. The implications are profound. One of the most interesting apps that someone produced was a virtual tee-shirt shop. It was placed in the 20 most expensive shopping streets in the world, selling t-shirts. Stop and think about that for a minute. He built a virtual shop where a real one already existed. His shop was accessible via a mobile phone, while the real one was accessible through, well, being real. Real space and its virtual overlay are being used by different people. There will be lawyers."

Comments

read the book

[hguorbray]

see Halting State by Charles Stross and Spook Country by William Gibson for examples of how this overlay technology might work/look/feel like

both books are pretty good reads and the VR overlay is central to the Stross book and a fairly big plot point in the Gibson book. Also recommend Stross's 'The Laundry Files' series -where IT and Necromancy collide....

-I'm just sayin