The Biggest Challenge for Augmented Reality
I admit I love all kinds of new technologies and Augmented Reality (AR) is interesting to say the least. It will further blur the lines between Cyburbia and the physical world with how we interact with things. It will also futher expand the wealth of information and increase the scarcity of attention. In a post today on GigaOm they had some great pics showing how AR might work. That got me thinking of what will be a barrier to entry.
To me, that would seem to be “geolocation” by a user. Research has shown that less than 0.23% of smart phone users willingly enable themselves to be known in their mobile use. We’re increasingly becoming aware of our privacy.
Many AR apps will require that you allow the device to show the world where you are. Certainly if you’re having an affair on a supposed “business trip” you’re not going to want that feature enabled. Personally, I don’t enable that level of connecting.
We’ve not seen any major Web/Mobile app that enables geolocation for the service to work really take off and be mainstream accepted. Perhaps the under 20 age group will enable such services?
But right now, the one major hurdle for AR acceptance to really go mainstream is people allowing themselves to be known to their mobile character and everyone else when they engage in AR apps.
What do you think? Will you enable geolocating when AR becomes more available?
I’m not entirely sure I understood the reference to Geolocating and the implications of user privacy as suggested in the article.
For instance, right now While looking at the display on my cell phone it actually shows the name of the shopping mall where i’m sitting and typing out this reply. This already put my cell phone at this time at this location. So the cellular company knows that my cell phone (and me) was at that particular location and and what time. Furthermore, the IP address allocated to my device also in a way contributes to my location, as does the web-browser referer.
Does that mean I would object to this?
Similarly, with regards to AR, applications make use of GPS, the digital compass and accelerometer in the device to overlay basic Ar info such as places to eat, ATM machines etc.
Granted I have not delved deep enough to know whether apps such as wikitude and Layar and Junaio, are actually making any back door connections (if any) to servers and recording any more info, that what a cell phone and Ip address assigned to your device already is.
If they are, I would switch to another AR app. Meanwhile there is a whole other use of AR.
Something to think about is applications like FourSquare, where people voluntarily make their locations known!
Regards
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