Augmented Reality is more than Virtual Reality

The world in a nutshell

Here is a sneak preview onto the Fairy Tales chapter of the new book edition:
Some companies are currently trying to build a virtual replica of the real world. There are several varieties, from Google Earth to Metaversum. Yet even in their the final and most completed state, these approaches would be nothing against what would be possible in a world with ubiquitous Augmented Reality technology...

 

THE END OF HARDWARE - pages fom part2: Fiction

The world in a nutshell

Virtual tele-conferences were everyday business meanwhile. But once upon a time, we decided to have these meetings not in the office but abroad, at some nice places as can be found around the globe. The ever thickening grid of webcams and the billions of pictures and live transmissions from personal goggle cams adding to it, are making available visual data from almost any place at almost any time, often so even entirely live.
Stream identifiers and general hub proxying now enable anybody to transmit data and video to billions of people without uploading more than once. It also saves the better part of all network traffic, as not a single byte has to be sent twice over the same line [120].
The 'Grid' as it's actually being called, formerly the 'Ubicam' (you-be-cam or ubiquitous cam) network, responds to any request for image data by assembling stored and live camera data related to the place, thereby generating an artificial live picture of the right perspective, time of day and even weather, a perfect merger of real and simulated features.
This is not entirely reliable information of course, so it may be used for general survey, travel, ambience simulation and the like, but if I just want to know what's ahead on the road I'd rather rely on some unprocessed live pictures form the car in front of me. Which isn't a contradiction, fortunately, as I can get these pictures in flavors, the older ones browned out by a sepia effect, virtual ones half transparent and so on, so I can immediately figure out how reliable and true any of these impressions really are. When the Grid was first invented, people objected that pictures from personal cams could be abused to trace people and spy after them. Even just being seen live by anyone from anywhere, without even knowing, something that already took place when only stationery webcams were available, was a bit scary and caused sort of upheaval at times. The current Grid cameras are anonymized however, so it is very difficult to find out who's cam's the pictures uploaded are.
The general user has no means for exploiting this data in a way as to trace anybody, as perspectives rendered for him are revealing but a little of the original pictures.

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Nevertheless at the intermediate servers, somebody could identify someone's personal cam pictures, by the cockpit of the car he's riding for example, and get the position by comparing the landscape seen to the global database. Fortunately, this has been adverted by several other measures, so anybody can now be quite sure about his grid transmissions being safe.
What adds to it: Anybody's own personal recordings are prohibited from being used against the person in trials of any kind, even if they had been opened for real time public access by the Grid, and were recorded or observed by other persons.
The Private Memory Act had long been struggled upon, but in the end the insight prevailed that anything else would have amounted to thought control, forcing people just to avoid certain technologies, an obstacle to progress and an open door towards intellectual enslavement.
Only for this wise decision had it been happening that the global Grid now enables anybody to 'virtually' be everywhere, in a real time reproduction of the entire world, if so desired even including temperature, 3D wind sensing, broadband radio reproduction, smell and more, and all this at no travel costs and no energy expenses.
Virtual travel is also of course much better than 'developing' the coastline with skyscrapers where clueless people can buy condos for exercising their self mummification while staring at the sea.
The other side of the problem, being spied on by being seen from other people's cams, public cams etc, was mended by introducing a mandatory camouflaging scheme:
If you don't want to be seen, the system masks your face, even changes your clothes, or makes you perfectly invisible in any scenery renderings. Private places are also excluded from public view, of course. Only for safety applications like those traffic X-ray and view-ahead features, invisibility is overridden to a certain extent. The system can obey to your wishes by either recognizing you or by responding to a personal 'transponder', a feature of your vision glasses transmitting certain collaborative information to receivers in a limited area.

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Current webcams can receive these transmissions and attribute them to the appropriate sender by comparing to personal appearance data as are always used for basic AR device interactions as document exchange etc., in order to identify and locate the correspondents.
There are opt-in as well as opt-out schemes being used for the global real time model (intentionally spying after people or virtually following them, even if they are not anonymized, is against anti stalking and privacy laws of course, and offenders can usually be detected by the picture streams they are requesting).
With our conferences, quite some things have to be taken into account: there is also an option to be seen, for example, as a virtual visitor. You may visit a place and display an avatar of yours (that can of course only be seen by wearers of AR glasses, or by other virtual visitors).
If we have a meeting, we will of course opt to see each other, but not necessarily to be seen by third parties. And in some places, an invasion of avatars would just clutter them if all were visible to all. Imagine if only a few of the million companies around the globe went to have a meeting at Zabriskie Point (including a spectacular virtual blow-up at the end) ...
Well, they can do it, no problem, if they set it up so any of them can only be seen by their own buddies. This kind of events emerging lead to a peculiar consequence: many spectacular places now have 'ghost tables' set aside, where anybody can have a virtual meeting without being bothered by real visitors.
Some have been asking fees for it, but now almost all are relying on ad revenues. They are placing some ad posts around you and get a fortune out of it, because PR companies know that hosts of people will see these ads, inevitably and for quite some time.
In fact, the entire Grid first started from the ad business, as it is easy just to replace signposts from the real world with other, virtual ones and add even some more. It was just a smooth transgression from mere satellite imaging to 3D modeling to linked photos to linked webcams, and then, when the cam density allowed it, to artificial live perspective rendering. People now use it for sightseeing, traveling, meetings, even demonstrations.
Many worlds parallel to the real one have been created, with very complicated links to the real one and each other, an entire universe of 'second lives' for just anybody.

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Many worlds parallel to the real one have been created, with very complicated links to the real one and each other, an entire universe of 'second lives' for just anybody. Social simulations, important for exploring the effects of laws, political decisions and entire society models, could in theory be performed in a brainstorming workshop as well, but the reality aspect proved extremely valuable. Any new 'ideology' that's going to be imposed onto the public will now first be tried in the virtual - down to simplicities as traffic planning. This way, at least some of the many mistakes as there were made in former times can now be avoided. Many people, myself included, are regularly volunteering in these simulation runs. It's a game that makes a lot of sense.
Nevertheless, I personally do like the Grid's travel opportunities above all else. Now you may think I'm a couch potato, too lazy to go out, but this here can actually be a lot more action than just being carried around in a tourist bus.
For example, I like to do virtual traveling on my bicycle trainer, actually riding through alien countries and working out in the course of it. If I'm getting impatient, I turn the bicycle into a pedal plane.
Many people like virtual wandering in a walking machine, or virtual climbing or driving or flying. Maybe next I'll buy one of these new gym machines that will actually turn me into a bird...

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Nov. 09, 2008

 


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