I'd just taken my meds (dark chocolate covered espresso beans, if you must know) and like many addicts, was wondering where to replenish my stash. If I was strolling down Fillmore or Park Avenue, or Abbey Road, getting whatever I wanted could be easy with a cell phone and augmented reality. As you look through your phone_s camera, you see text, images and information overlaid onto your view of the outside world. Point your camera at a building and see a list of the businesses inside pop up. Aim your phone at the building's wall and an informational sales video about a candy store launches and is projected on the wall of the building. As you walk farther down the street, you scan your colleague's office sign with your phone and a handful of Yelp reviews pop up ("Soft voice, hard couch"). Continuing along, you launch a Twitter app that shows you the Tweets emanating in your geographic area. Suddenly you see someone familiar on the street. Catch her face on your viewfinder and facial recognition generates her online profile (Tabitha Jones, 28, MFT, 3rd Place, Raisin Bread Bake-off, Akron, Ohio, 1998) superimposed on your screen. And should you find yourself in Barcelona, struggling with your Spanish, rusty from your internship at La Raza, an app lets you direct your camera at any sign and translate from Spanish into English, real-time, on the fly, without the Internet.

There's augmented reality in the post-analytic world. Read more...

Cleopatra Victoria, MFT
Impulse Founder and Editor-in-Chief Emeritus