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

Retailers are shaking in their boots

[ratnerstar]

... Because I know when I walk down the Champs-Elysees in Paris, what I really want to be doing is looking at the world through the screen of my smartphone! Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?

Even better: sell t-shirts that appear blank but display hipster slogans when viewed through an AR app.

Re:Retailers are shaking in their boots

[theshowmecanuck]

There is an excellent SciFi book called The Prefect, by Alastair Reynolds where something like this plays a key role, but in an even grander scale. People chose what they want to look like in augmented reality, and most everyone have implants that pick this up and automatically route the image into their brain without having to look elsewhere like a smart phone screen (at least that is how I read it). People could walk around looking like they had horns, or were fauns or satyrs, etc. The lead character(s) who were a form of police had to wear special glasses since they could not afford to have artificial implants in their brain that could be hacked. But the augmented reality also hooked everyone in the society together (in ten thousand habitats orbiting a planet around a distant star from earth). It was an interesting take on how technology might impact reality in the future. Anyways, FWIW Reynolds writes some interesting stuff.

Re:Fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen the real world lately? People ARE walking around perpetually staring into their phones.

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

Tried it

[93 Escort Wagon]

The implications are profound.

No, not really. Unless, maybe, you're Geordi LaForge.

Stop and think about that for a minute. He built a virtual shop where a real one already existed.

Big deal. I've already been able to walk into Sears and shop at JCPenney.com on my phone, if I chose, for the past several years. What this guy has done is basically artificially limit his online store's reach.

Re:Same space, different market?

[Skarecrow77]

when you put it that way, it sounds just like pop-up spam.

i'm sure that as soon as someone invents an ad-blocker extension for AR, we'll be fine.