LIVING IN AUGMENTED REALITY

It is time to throw the use of the term ‘virtual' out of the window

Recently I explained the wonders of digital virtual reality to an uncle and aunt, both in their 90's. I told them I had just had my first experience of 3D, using a Playstation VR headset while ‘being’ Lara Croft in Rise of the Tomb Raider.  When I told them about the real-life sensation of walking around in a virtual room, my aunt was bemused. “But isn’t the real world good enough?”  Of course, in most respects reality cannot be beaten, however much 3D games and movies using computer generated imagery in the mean time have filled our brains with awe inspiring sceneries and sensations that ‘reality’ can never provide.

In this light one could say that the use of the term ‘virtual reality’ holds a contradiction. For rather than that they are trying to increasingly match reality, the movie and games industries have – greatly - surpassed it. Virtual reality today is far more than reality, not a little less. Secondly, I think that the greatest leap forward will not be any kind of equivalence of the real and the virtual, but the intrusion – and ultimate fusion - of one another. In this world the virtual and the real together become ‘enhanced’ or ‘augmented reality’ (AR), a term already widely used.

Examples of this fused AR already exist, for instance Google Glasses and Hololens (Microsoft), both still being subject to further development.  Perhaps the same applies to Pokémon Go, which became an instant hype when it was launched. It pushed people out of their homes and catch imaginary digital monsters in the streets, in parks and public buildings, “blending digital fantasy and tangible reality in exciting and sometimes dangerous ways,” as one review phrased it. The hype soon passed, it was just a teaser of AR things to come.

Nonetheless AR applications also include the realities which already have become standard, e.g. in the car industry, through manifold electronic devices (automatic backwards in-parking, warning signals in dense traffic). It won’t take long before cars are talking to us, not just our electronic navigation device.

Let's think of the long term prospects. One website offering some predictions tells us: "augmented reality is exciting new technology, and there are probably ways to use it that will emerge in the coming years that we can't yet even imagine".

Still, it is not difficult to picture this blended world of the natural and the digital, where people move around, anywhere and anytime, doing various transactions along the way, either buying or selling, and thus fulfilling their niche in a globalized (as much as purely regionalized cyberspace. This may seem very abstract, but in fact we already have made our first steps in such a multidimensional space. Just apply Pokémon Go technology to your grocery store. and the next minute your purchases are ready to be picked up (it is a reality in China). Or alternatively, click your car with any remote device (probably your Smart Phone), and it will drive out of the parking by itself and open the driver's door before your doorstep. Next you produce and sell a valuable 'thing' or service, you press "print" or "send", you do the transaction, and it will literally materialize at some distant spot, whilst costs and revenues are automatically recorded in your bookkeeping, subtracting taxes (e.g. V.A.T.) along the way. When doing this, you may be comfortably sitting on a beach side, or perhaps doing some typing work in a flexible office.

Increased personal flexibility and mobility translate into flexible and mobile on-demand production and service outlets with also do the pickup and delivery at your fingertip's notice. We transact, we communicate, we "see" all we need to respond and co-operate in AR networks, in trains, in our own car (when it is directed by satellite systems) etc.

Let's just hope we can still enjoy real-life human company at dinner time and some physical paperwork if need be.