9 ms·

Hyper-Reality [video]

301 points by dumindunuwan 10y ago

cryowaffle 10y ago
Creative, well done. Pretty much what we have today without all the AR.
- lomnakkus 10y ago
  ... and people wonder why we use ad blockers. (Btw, I agree that this was incredibly creative, imaginative and well-done. It's just really really scary.)
lomnakkus 10y ago
This looks so hyper-active that I'd honestly be completely overwhelmed by the amount of 'information' pushed at me that I'd just end up a blubbering mess lying in the fetal position until somebody turned 'reality' off. (I mean, obviously that doesn't say anything about whether it'll happen or not, but I really don't want this to happen. It looks like an incredibly scary and above all vapid state to be in.) EDIT: Btw, wasn't this posted a few days ago? Can't find it, but I'm pretty sure I saw this around here. (Then again, maybe I saw it on reddit.)
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  This is the reality companies would like you to embrace, only on the web and mobile because AR is not yet here. The video isn't that far from the way an average non-tech person experiences their smartphone and the Internet. About the amount of information - humans are good at tuning things out. Banner blindness, and all. But what really bothers me about that vision is the amount of bullshit that's pushed on people. All forms of interruptions trying to make you buy more stuff or interact with some useless crap (also known nowadays as "user engagement"). AR could be an awesome tools. Maybe it will be - if we can keep the people who ruined the mobile and the web out of it. I don't see how to do it though, especially if we're talking commercial devices for non-tech people. As a counterbalance, here's a video from 7 years ago, which makes me appreciate the idea of AR / VR on many different levels: https://vimeo.com/3365942 https://vimeo.com/3365942.
  - lomnakkus 10y ago
    > All forms of interruptions trying Yes, exactly. What really struck/scared me was how this kind of AR would really prevent me from concentrating on anything for more than 1 second at a time. I'm sure commercial interests would want this type of thing, but presumably they'll need some humans to actually pay attention to things so that they actually have some pool of people to recruit programmers from... but maybe they aren't thinking that far ahead. Maybe the 'dead end' for humanity will just be some type of AR where there's no way out because there's nobody outside AR enough to do anything else than just sit there in rapt attention. Hmmm... maybe I just had an idea for a dystopian sci-fi novel.[1] [1] Yeah, somebody must have thought of this before. EDIT: Just grammar and things. Plus, I discovered that I actually really like the word 'actual'.
    - alttab 10y ago
      Sounds very similar to wall-e.
  - Yhippa 10y ago
    Also all these things trying to grab your attention will be layered over time. You'll get used to them and it will be completely normal at some point to have all that stuff blinking at you trying to get your attention. I imagine dropping someone from the year 1916 here today would generate a similar reaction.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      Normal at the societal level. Still lowering our IQ by a good 5-10 points.
- leephillips 10y ago
  Reminded me of the BBC "Sherlock" series, which attempts to represent visually Holmes' mental experience of gleaning information, hidden to normal people, from his highly developed observational skills. Specialized domain knowledge and active attention can indeed provide a kind of "information overlay" represented in this film, and without depending on a device. But I wonder how close to Holmes-style powers we can come through training ourselves to see beneath the surface?
  - lomnakkus 10y ago
    Interesting observation. I got the impression from Sherlock (the series) that it's not really something that he can control, it just happens. That and, it's quite "low key", but definitely does affect his life in bad ways, but -- let's face it -- this is entertainment, so he doesn't end up destitute on the streets as a madman, but rather ends up as a sort of quaint Victorian (anti-hero)-hero who's "just a bit odd". Plus, it's fiction. If you had that kind of thing happening all the time in real life, you'd go insane or be autistic[1]. [1] Let me just be clear that I don't mean that in a derogatory manner. I'm not even a layman when it comes to autism, but I've read a couple of well-regarded books (by professionals in the field) and they describe it (among other things) as being in a state of constant sensory overload where e.g. repetitive actions become a sort of coping mechanism to deal with the overload.
    - leephillips 10y ago
      I think that you're right, that it's supposed to "just happen". But I don't think it causes him any distress - what distress he does experience is caused by his having to live among normal people, who can't keep up. His conversations with his brother show that the latter experiences this impatience even more keenly. This is faithful to Conan Doyle's stories, where his Holmes is always many steps ahead of the normals, and resorts to recreational drugs to deal with something like boredom from lack of stimulation. In another TV adaptation of the Holmes stories, "House, MD", the main character shares a similar frustration with having to live among people who are merely highly intelligent.
      - 10y ago
- placebo 10y ago
  I also asked myself whether I've seen it here a few days ago or perhaps it was on some other site - seems like this alone suggests how I'd handle a higher dose of information overload... :-) Perhaps it's the generation gap - even though I love software technologies and do it for a living, looking at the younger generation in the family multitask across several applications while talking on the phone and watching TV makes me wonder if there's more here than just trading depth coverage for breadth coverage. I wonder whether they've actually extended and adapted to handling the current of information that would overwhelm me.
- protomyth 10y ago
  > EDIT: Btw, wasn't this posted a few days ago? Can't find it, but I'm pretty sure I saw this around here. (Then again, maybe I saw it on reddit.) I think a bunch of folks have submitted this one (yep, click past on article). Lost Memories https://vimeo.com/49425975 https://vimeo.com/49425975 and its sequel https://vimeo.com/152889154 https://vimeo.com/152889154 are also pretty good and focus a bit more on the human side.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  This looks so hyper-active that I'd honestly be completely overwhelmed by the amount of 'information' pushed at me that I'd just end up a blubbering mess lying in the fetal position until somebody turned 'reality' off. This was my general reaction to shopping malls when I was a child and teenager.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
And some people are still asking why use ad-block? This video is a perfect summary of the state of mobile and the web. As 'cryowaffle said, it's pretty much what we have today, without the AR [0]. That's why I think the whole ecosystem around web and mobile technologies is sick and need to be fought against. We need less ads, less pseudoproducts that in fact are just toys, less routing everything through third-party clouds. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11754750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11754750
- amelius 10y ago
  I'm hoping the opposite will happen. That the advent of strong AI will bring us better ad blocking technology, that may even block ads using augmented reality techniques. Imagine all ads in real life replaced by beautiful paintings :)
  - loup-vaillant 10y ago
    Strong AI is most likely to bring 2 outcomes: salvation (if we're very careful), or doom (the default outcome). Because <very long argument about intelligence explosion>. Anything in between is likely moot: at the very least, strong AI has the ability to end all jobs —overnight in the case of desk jobs. Ads and ad blocking are meaningless in comparison: what is the significance markets, money, and labour when the machines do all the work?
    - Florin_Andrei 10y ago
      > Strong AI is most likely to bring 2 outcomes: salvation (if we're very careful), or doom (the default outcome). Funny thing is, it's not like AI is going to make a landing here from outer space. It's not some external factor that we don't control. It's us who are building it. Any possible outcome could be avoided if we just stop working on it. I know this is not going to happen, but I feel this is the kind of obvious thing that ought to be stated once in a while.
      - dota_fanatic 10y ago
0942v8653 10y ago
Also see "Sight", another short film with a similar premise: https://vimeo.com/46304267 https://vimeo.com/46304267
- leephillips 10y ago
  This is worth watching for the end credits especially.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Credits are pretty cool. I haven't watched them before (I've seen the video, but didn't pay attention past the end of the action). One thing I've noticed is an interesting design dark pattern. If you look at the "stats" of the film crew, you can see that the "level 0" of the bars is past the label - which, without a low stat to compare with, makes them look longer than they should be. Not sure if they did this on purpose to bring some point across or not, but this kind of stuff happens often in real-world publications and is done to mislead readers.
Karunamon 10y ago
This same person did another movie along the same lines a while ago - this one in the home. I think the hyper-reality got quite a bit more hyper since last time... https://vimeo.com/8569187 https://vimeo.com/8569187 There's an interesting mechanic there. The person is seen modifying the advertising intensity while something to do with money comes up on the UI. It looks like you get paid to sit in crazy ad land, use the "service" for free with less (but still ridiculous) ads, and presumably, you'd pay for ad-free.
- kdamken 10y ago
  The implication you'd have to pay to not have your wallpaper be made of ads is by far the most depressing part of this video. Reminds me of this episode of Black Mirror (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits) that takes place in the future. In your room there are ads everywhere, and if you're not looking it stops and yells at you. To not see them you have to pay money.
  - Bartkusa 10y ago
    My Amazon Kindle and Fire Tablet already do this. I would need to pay $15 for the ability to skin my Fire's lockscreen. (Although it's much easier to not look at my devices, than to not look at my apartment's walls.)
hosh 10y ago
I saw this last week. I couldn't tell whether it was utopia or dystopia, yet recognized how many of the present-day technology and trends will result in something like that. Seeing it all together in a first-person perspective like that was startling. Dukkha, that is, the existential anguish (Sisiphyus) is present, whether technology is sophisticated enough or not. Technology cannot address dukkha. It also resembled some of the psychedelic experiences I had, yet not quite -- for example, the way colors overlay the streets and grocery store aisle is close, and yet, the sense that the symbols overlaying are conscious, sentient, and alive is missing. The way you move through space and have the visual and audio overlay change the space around you reminds me of some of the way journeying happens. It is also interesting how, when the devices rebooted and the colors of the world bled out, gives the same kind of contrast that some people feel when their initial spiritual awakening experience fades. Lastly, in a psychedelic experience, there is a connection between the inner experience and the outer experience; this set of technology does not give that sense.
- purplerabbit 10y ago
  You need to see "Enter the Void"
  - hosh 10y ago
    How come?
    - nyolfen 10y ago
      it's entirely shot in a continuous first person like this video, but incorporates explicitly psychedelic elements. the first scene of the film has the protagonist smoking DMT and showing the visuals, which persist to some degree through the film
      - hosh 10y ago
        Sure, that's great. Or I can meditate or do a ceremony and get a first-hand journey like that. Why watch a film?* In Hyper-Reality, it's showing an experience where mainstream access to VR and AR gives mainstream access to some of the psychedelic experiences, and what that says about our civilization, and what's coming in the future. When I read the Wikipedia entry for "Enter the Void" does not seem as interesting to me. * I do watch films like this. My point though isn't that Hyper Reality resembles a psychedelic experience, but that it gives us a glimpse of the future where pseudo-psychedelic consciousness shift is available in the mainstream, and part of the fabric of every day experience.
newobj 10y ago
Mostly inevitable, a little terrifying, but also some really creative use cases I'd never pondered there, especially highlighting the street when traffic is about to come through. There's probably a lot more interesting ideas to ponder in this video then just "boo hoo ads", if you can "open your mind, Quaid"...
- monk_e_boy 10y ago
  In David Brins "Existence" he has this exact same AR, where the government controls some channels, there are other commercial channels and hacker channels. I think it's a really neat idea. In his world there were also tiny cameras everywhere and you could connect to them (for a tiny price) view the feed and any recordings.
- flanbiscuit 10y ago
  The scifi-cyberpunk-geek in me can't wait for wearables like this! This is an exaggerated view of what can happen but also not too unfathomable. And yes there we'll be ads and unnecessary gamification, but like you noticed in the video, there will also be very useful technology as well. Some positive things I took away from this: - Real-time language translation - integrating map and directions into your view - (as you mentioned) clear and evident warnings that you couldn't cross the street - be able to add more information about products at stores. I know this similar to advertising, but if you're at a grocery store and are able to get more info about products immediately, I see that a plus. - The fact that you have an HUD for all your apps helps reduce "text-neck" sprain and also allows for ease of walking and and being on your device. - Fashion. The one person who attacked her, while that part being a negative experience, her body was covered in videos. I can foresee the fashion industry becoming more involved with this tech. (I think Snow Crash dealt with this in the virtual world part of the novel)
  - tedd4u 10y ago
    I think the attacker has camouflage that obscures their identity. Also I believe the attacker used her blood to do bypass biometric verification and fully take over her account (draining all her points). If you liked this video I'd highly recommend two episodes of the British series "Black Mirror." Check out "Fifteen Million Merits" and "The Entire History of You." List of Black Mirror episodes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Black_Mirror_episodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Black_Mirror_episodes
purplerabbit 10y ago
This reminds me of "Enter the Void". Both films are in first person, and draw emphasis to the difference between external reality and personal perception. New "augmented reality" stuff is super interesting to me because it's basically the means of creating a shared illusion. So, like a drug trip, but more social and controlled. Basically like video games, but way larger in scale and social reach :) Thoughts?
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  My thought? Not sure if I want a lot of that illusion to be shared. I wish AR would be used to really augment people, and that for me implies a degree of customization. This topic is super interesting to me too. I just don't want it to look like on that video...
  - purplerabbit 10y ago
    I'm with you on your last point. But I really don't think that this film is an accurate representation of what it'll be like at all. Unless you really wanted to make it that way for yourself, which neither you nor I would want
  - scotty79 10y ago
    Movie seems to indicate lots of customization. Same yoghurt is branded/marketed differently when see as 'Emillio'. Dog pet shopping assistant becomes scantily clad women.
- losteric 10y ago
  > New "augmented reality" stuff is super interesting to me because it's basically the means of creating a shared illusion. So, like a drug trip, but more social and controlled. Basically like video games, but way larger in scale and social reach :) Would you want to be constantly immersed in a video game with your friends/family? Or even the same social groups? That idea does nothing for me... it's actually a huge turn-off from AR. If I just wanted trippy graphics with friends, I'd go on a shroom camping trip with friends. In my mind, AR is about automating and building context. It's the first cybernetic, tightly integrating our visual/auditory senses with technology. Video games, re-skinning reality, omnipresent advertising... none of that will surprise me, that's updating current applications to use new technology. Boring. What about new applications? Imagine working on a car engine and hitting a snag, snapping off a seized bolt head for example. AR should recognize that I'm staring at a car engine, grunting in frustration, with elevated heart rate/sweat and other physiological symptoms of stress. The application should use those signals to look at my contact list (integrating their social media context) and suggest calling a mechanically inclined friend for advice. It should know that I hate animated graphics covering my work and simply talk, telling me that John might be able to help out if I buy him some beer. At some point it might even be smart enough to warn me against snapping the bolt head in the first place.. Or imagine project management style stuff. AR should know I'm 24 minutes away from my next meeting by foot and tell me to start walking (offering to reserve a taxi at the same time). Once I start walking, AR should automatically start giving me meeting prep (notes I prepared beforehand, meeting invite body, who's on the meeting invite list, etc). It should also show me a line that will take me all the way to the meeting room, and highlight the right button on any elevators on the way. Imagine I'm painting a large canvas piece. Instead of lugging around a handful of sketches, putting them away and taking them out every time I work on the piece, AR can display (or even overlay) hundreds of sketches (letting me position them as I see fit). It can remind me that a particular part of the canvas is still wet, or when I can start painting over a section. Even better, it could show me contextual paint reviews when I'm at the shop... recommending certain brands because the colors dry true, or any number of personally relevant metrics (pulled from past internet search history). Augmented reality: Adding to reality. Virtual reality: Replacing reality.
kdamken 10y ago
The little shopping cart dog in this video reminds me how much I hate "gamification" in everyday products and services. It's rarely something that enhances your experience, and is there simply to separate you from your hard earned dollars. If I want to be "gamified", I'll play the video game I purchased on my gaming machine.
- binarymax 10y ago
  Yeah but that scene was so on point! Especially how there is a cut to the next scene and the dog is wearing a hat, implying some achievement. Such a great series of videos. Extremely well done, and horrifying because it seems plausible (even if only a little).
  - kdamken 10y ago
    Haha it certainly was. I noticed that too. Even worse a part of me totally wanted to deck my virtual pet out in a top hat as well.
    - jerf 10y ago
      Well, that's the thing, isn't it? We don't decry this stuff because it doesn't work, we decry it because it does. With years of practice, I've metaphorically calloused myself against a lot of these things now. For instance, I'm nearly immune to the stupid "play half a commercial, post link to 'see how it ends'" technique I see every few months. By "immune" I don't mean that I no longer feel the draw, but that it is no longer anywhere near enough for me to actually do anything about it. But it took effort, and I find myself wondering, is there anything else I'm giving up to have that metaphorical callous? What are the consequences of the brain adaptations necessary to function under this constant cognitive assault? (And I'm not at all sure the answer is easy. "More alienation" or "less empathy" are really snap answers, but at the level of detail I'm interested in, also vacuous. I'd really love to know but probably never will.)
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Series of videos? There's more than one (and that other old one about making tea)?
pdkl95 10y ago
Is "hyper" used in the "hyper-active" sense? The video is portraying augmented reality (as satire about current marketing practices and corporate attempts to minmax everything). If I understand Baudrillard correctly, Disneyland or "reality" TV are hyperreal. To be hyperreal, wouldn't you would have to believe all the augmented ads/etc in the video were reality?
r8ssi 10y ago
Wonderfully done. Both this and the Domestic Robocop one they did six years ago linked by 'Karunamon. I appreciate the density. Lots of detail to read into. Two pieces this was reminiscent of and I'd suggest, if you're interested, are: Black Mirror especially Series 1 Episode 2 "Fifteen Million Merits" and Terry Gilliam's Zero Theorem
- PavlovsCat 10y ago
  That "speech" in that Black Mirror episode for me is up there with the "Network" rant. > All we know is fake fodder and buying shit. That's how we speak to each other, how we express ourselves, is buying shit. What, I have a dream? The peak of our dreams is a new app for our Dopple, it doesn't exist! It's not even there! We buy shit that's not even there. Show us something real and free and beautiful. You couldn't. Yeah? It'd break us. We're too numb for it.
asadlionpk 10y ago
Btw the creator Kickstarted this video: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/723600195/hyper-reality-a-new-vision-of-the-future https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/723600195/hyper-reality...
Kiro 10y ago
I know it's supposed to be dystopian but I can't wait until this is reality.
coenhyde 10y ago
You have to use your hands? That's a babies toy! Seriously though. People are too lazy to use their hands to navigate an invisible interface. It's a lot more work than using a mouse and keyboard.
- Loughla 10y ago
  I don't know that it's laziness, as much as just fighting human evolution. With nothing to actually touch, touch-based interfacing with things isn't very easy. Our fingers are literally designed to feel input, not to act as a simple stylus for our optic nerve. And anyway, this type of invisible interface makes you look dumb (http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-10-12 http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-10-12).
  - scotty79 10y ago
    Probably future UI will be people touching themselves and only occasionally waving in the air.
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beamatronic 10y ago
I want this, but only if I can control exactly what I can see.
- scotty79 10y ago
  probably same way you do with the web, bit of css here and there, some plugin that drops contents from some sources wholesale...
rawnlq 10y ago
At 4:00 you can see that not much of the world has actually changed other than having tracking markers added everywhere: https://imgur.com/ffgbpjb https://imgur.com/ffgbpjb. So the tech depicted here is actually less advanced than we what we have today (Hololens etc are all trackerless). Other than having a compact form for glasses this kind of reality is achievable in just a couple more years. Despite the theme of the video I am looking forward to it. The first decade of having the internet sucked too with geocities design and crazy popups/viruses on every click. But I wouldn't choose an alternate reality where the internet didn't exist at all. We should be more optimistic that all of these UI issues will be figured out once it actually gets adoption.
- DasIch 10y ago
  You forget about batteries. We are probably able to do VR/AR stuff like this in a few years but we won't have the energy to implement them as wearables. It will take a lot of progress or some kind of massive breakthrough in battery technology to actually produce good non-trivial wearables.
  - rawnlq 10y ago
    The hololens can already last 5.5 hours so it doesn't seem that impossible of a problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AADEqLIALk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AADEqLIALk. The dealbreaker right now seems to be resolution and a narrow field of view where it "is like standing 2 feet away from a 15″ monitor". As someone not in this field, I have no idea if the remaining problems are going to take more than another few years to solve but I hope not!
    - DasIch 10y ago
      5.5h is nothing. It's not long enough that you can use it the entire day, it's not even long enough in a work environment. 5.5h may be enough for gaming or something but apart from that, it's just too limiting. Additionally to that the Hololens is also quite bulky, so it's not like you can sacrifice on the design to create more battery capacity. It already doesn't look like something anyone would want to wear outside. Even if you improve the battery capacity, increase efficiency of the hardware and software and you still have something you can't really sell anyone as a AR-utopia level device, just on account of that design. I'd expect it to take at least a decade until you'll see regular people wearing AR glasses regularly as a personal device during their daily life.
partycoder 10y ago
If anything I would appreciate an AR that FILTERED content.
- zardo 10y ago
  Remove ugly things from the world and replace them with beautiful things. I think that might be something that people would put weird glasses on for.
  - partycoder 10y ago
    Or auto format poor code
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
We are working really hard to make the underlying infrastructure of this type of interface a reality. I think every day about how to build these capabilities, without them becoming overwhelming like you see in the video. Everything from how to interface (gesture actually sucks: non-haptic, unnatural), to how to serve contextual data using natural visual input without relying on engineered visual markers (QR codes etc...). We have come a long way from the infrastructure perspective (mobile visual mapping and re-localization) and are really looking forward to having better visual interfaces - though they are years away from becoming mainstream. One other thing that nobody has commented on, that is critical to these systems working is having content. 3D content is an order of magnitude harder to build than 2D content, so that is also a big focus of ours.
- sillysaurus3 10y ago
  3D content is an order of magnitude harder to build than 2D content Not really. It requires a different process and a different training regimen. ZBrush makes 3D content creation easy enough that you can be done with the dog model in the video in a matter of minutes, but only if you're trained with ZBrush.
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    but only if you're trained with ZBrush Only proving my point - but not really taking it far enough. If I asked the average designer to give me an image of a dog for my website/app etc... they could do it incredibly easy. Either get a dog and take a picture with a regular camera, maybe crop and edit or find/edit many of the ones you see now in well known software. If I asked that same group to make me a 3D model of a dog it would be literally orders of magnitude more complex. Knowing a 3D interface takes quite a bit of time. Building the model, especially if you want any kind of accuracy, even moreso.
    - sillysaurus3 10y ago
      That group isn't qualified to do the task that you're asking them to do. There are different types of artists. A 3D artist isn't the same as a 2D artist, which isn't the same as a designer. It wouldn't make sense to ask a devop to write you a website, then claim that webdev was an order of magnitude more difficult than devops.
nsxwolf 10y ago
I thought the part where her device was rebooted was chilling. I had never considered that a fully augmented reality could lead to a real world stripped of all its aesthetics to make room for AR target images to support the graphic overlays. And if everyone is lost in their own audio visual world, why should a grocery store even play background music anymore? It would be a sterile, alien world with your visor or whatever turned off.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  What you seem to call aesthetics I personally call "ad litter". I think this type of AR-enabled world could be much prettier than the one we have today. Imagine how beautiful it would look if all ads moved to virtual reality and you turned off your AR set. Speaking of which, one of the best features I could imagine for full-field-of-view AR would be an ad blocker for physical world.
  - nsxwolf 10y ago
    But not just ads - artwork, facades, human-readable street signs, just about anything could be on the chopping block to enable a better AR experience. Imagine grinding the friezes off the Parthenon and replacing them with checkerboard patterns to enable 3D animated ones.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  Lately I wear my headphones at the grocery store, and on the train. Part of it was culture shock; returning to the US and suddenly being able to understand everyone in a room, all the time. It was super overwhelming. Now I keep doing it because I hate people. I hate human interaction. I hate the shitty music and adverts I hear in grocery stores. I prefer the self checkout and I can usually pack my bags better anyway.
- jpindar 10y ago
  I don't think that's a loss - I wear headphones when I go grocery shopping to avoid the background music.
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powertower 10y ago
If there is such a thing as the Illuminati, that is bent on destroying the human spirit - this is what I imagine their plans for the future world would entail.
l33tbro 10y ago
The extreme isolation here got under my skin. The immediacy and tangibility of all these illusory elements is frightening, particularly for children born into this environment. Even if we solve the design issues, we remain sequestered in a simulation where there seems to be no respite. Guess I'm a sucker for authenticiy, whatever that still means. Congrats to the filmmaker here for dramatizing extreme virtuality with nuanced storytelling.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  Authenticity is... http://catandgirl.com/?p=2291 http://catandgirl.com/?p=2291
pYQAJ6Zm 10y ago
What I found most disturbing in this short is how devoid of a personality the protagonist seems to be. She appears at times bored, annoyed, exhausted, lost – and all of these, yes, are marks of an individuality still present – but what happened after the AR hijack was revealing: after a moment of disorientation, once her AR system got back online, she simply walked to the closest AR stimulus, and promptly entered the game. This one happened to be a game of a Catholicist theme, but could probably have been about anything else. Her lack of pause, her willingness to enter a new game just for relief, for purpose, show how empty the protagonist is. This world seems one where the self is constructed mostly from the gamified narratives of the AR system, whose creation mechanism is not revealed, but appears to lie completely beyond the reach of its consumers. Here there are, I think, hints of a free, wildly competitive market not only of goods and services, but most importantly of identities. If something like this is in reach of our (imminent) technology, I hope we have the sense to avoid it becoming a reality.
In2TheBoundless 10y ago
Reminds me a bit of "Flicker", by Porter Robinson (music video)
In2TheBoundless 10y ago
Reminds me a little of Porter Robinson's flicker (music video). Recently I read a Scientific American article that suggested there may be a link between navigational ability and memory. If that's true, then push to "Always On" GPS/Navigational Support could have deleterious effects on our capacity for memory (this was one idea in the article)
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ashitlerferad 10y ago
Looks like it could be a Black Mirror episode.

301 points by dumindunuwan 10y ago

cryowaffle 10y ago

Creative, well done. Pretty much what we have today without all the AR.

lomnakkus 10y ago
... and people wonder why we use ad blockers. (Btw, I agree that this was incredibly creative, imaginative and well-done. It's just really really scary.)

lomnakkus 10y ago

This looks so hyper-active that I'd honestly be completely overwhelmed by the amount of 'information' pushed at me that I'd just end up a blubbering mess lying in the fetal position until somebody turned 'reality' off. (I mean, obviously that doesn't say anything about whether it'll happen or not, but I really don't want this to happen. It looks like an incredibly scary and above all vapid state to be in.) EDIT: Btw, wasn't this posted a few days ago? Can't find it, but I'm pretty sure I saw this around here. (Then again, maybe I saw it on reddit.)

TeMPOraL 10y ago
This is the reality companies would like you to embrace, only on the web and mobile because AR is not yet here. The video isn't that far from the way an average non-tech person experiences their smartphone and the Internet. About the amount of information - humans are good at tuning things out. Banner blindness, and all. But what really bothers me about that vision is the amount of bullshit that's pushed on people. All forms of interruptions trying to make you buy more stuff or interact with some useless crap (also known nowadays as "user engagement"). AR could be an awesome tools. Maybe it will be - if we can keep the people who ruined the mobile and the web out of it. I don't see how to do it though, especially if we're talking commercial devices for non-tech people. As a counterbalance, here's a video from 7 years ago, which makes me appreciate the idea of AR / VR on many different levels: https://vimeo.com/3365942 https://vimeo.com/3365942.
- lomnakkus 10y ago
  > All forms of interruptions trying Yes, exactly. What really struck/scared me was how this kind of AR would really prevent me from concentrating on anything for more than 1 second at a time. I'm sure commercial interests would want this type of thing, but presumably they'll need some humans to actually pay attention to things so that they actually have some pool of people to recruit programmers from... but maybe they aren't thinking that far ahead. Maybe the 'dead end' for humanity will just be some type of AR where there's no way out because there's nobody outside AR enough to do anything else than just sit there in rapt attention. Hmmm... maybe I just had an idea for a dystopian sci-fi novel.[1] [1] Yeah, somebody must have thought of this before. EDIT: Just grammar and things. Plus, I discovered that I actually really like the word 'actual'.
  - alttab 10y ago
    Sounds very similar to wall-e.
- Yhippa 10y ago
  Also all these things trying to grab your attention will be layered over time. You'll get used to them and it will be completely normal at some point to have all that stuff blinking at you trying to get your attention. I imagine dropping someone from the year 1916 here today would generate a similar reaction.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Normal at the societal level. Still lowering our IQ by a good 5-10 points.
leephillips 10y ago
Reminded me of the BBC "Sherlock" series, which attempts to represent visually Holmes' mental experience of gleaning information, hidden to normal people, from his highly developed observational skills. Specialized domain knowledge and active attention can indeed provide a kind of "information overlay" represented in this film, and without depending on a device. But I wonder how close to Holmes-style powers we can come through training ourselves to see beneath the surface?
- lomnakkus 10y ago
  Interesting observation. I got the impression from Sherlock (the series) that it's not really something that he can control, it just happens. That and, it's quite "low key", but definitely does affect his life in bad ways, but -- let's face it -- this is entertainment, so he doesn't end up destitute on the streets as a madman, but rather ends up as a sort of quaint Victorian (anti-hero)-hero who's "just a bit odd". Plus, it's fiction. If you had that kind of thing happening all the time in real life, you'd go insane or be autistic[1]. [1] Let me just be clear that I don't mean that in a derogatory manner. I'm not even a layman when it comes to autism, but I've read a couple of well-regarded books (by professionals in the field) and they describe it (among other things) as being in a state of constant sensory overload where e.g. repetitive actions become a sort of coping mechanism to deal with the overload.
  - leephillips 10y ago
    I think that you're right, that it's supposed to "just happen". But I don't think it causes him any distress - what distress he does experience is caused by his having to live among normal people, who can't keep up. His conversations with his brother show that the latter experiences this impatience even more keenly. This is faithful to Conan Doyle's stories, where his Holmes is always many steps ahead of the normals, and resorts to recreational drugs to deal with something like boredom from lack of stimulation. In another TV adaptation of the Holmes stories, "House, MD", the main character shares a similar frustration with having to live among people who are merely highly intelligent.
    - 10y ago
placebo 10y ago
I also asked myself whether I've seen it here a few days ago or perhaps it was on some other site - seems like this alone suggests how I'd handle a higher dose of information overload... :-) Perhaps it's the generation gap - even though I love software technologies and do it for a living, looking at the younger generation in the family multitask across several applications while talking on the phone and watching TV makes me wonder if there's more here than just trading depth coverage for breadth coverage. I wonder whether they've actually extended and adapted to handling the current of information that would overwhelm me.
protomyth 10y ago
> EDIT: Btw, wasn't this posted a few days ago? Can't find it, but I'm pretty sure I saw this around here. (Then again, maybe I saw it on reddit.) I think a bunch of folks have submitted this one (yep, click past on article). Lost Memories https://vimeo.com/49425975 https://vimeo.com/49425975 and its sequel https://vimeo.com/152889154 https://vimeo.com/152889154 are also pretty good and focus a bit more on the human side.
stcredzero 10y ago
This looks so hyper-active that I'd honestly be completely overwhelmed by the amount of 'information' pushed at me that I'd just end up a blubbering mess lying in the fetal position until somebody turned 'reality' off. This was my general reaction to shopping malls when I was a child and teenager.

TeMPOraL 10y ago

And some people are still asking why use ad-block? This video is a perfect summary of the state of mobile and the web. As 'cryowaffle said, it's pretty much what we have today, without the AR [0]. That's why I think the whole ecosystem around web and mobile technologies is sick and need to be fought against. We need less ads, less pseudoproducts that in fact are just toys, less routing everything through third-party clouds. [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11754750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11754750

amelius 10y ago
I'm hoping the opposite will happen. That the advent of strong AI will bring us better ad blocking technology, that may even block ads using augmented reality techniques. Imagine all ads in real life replaced by beautiful paintings :)
- loup-vaillant 10y ago
  Strong AI is most likely to bring 2 outcomes: salvation (if we're very careful), or doom (the default outcome). Because <very long argument about intelligence explosion>. Anything in between is likely moot: at the very least, strong AI has the ability to end all jobs —overnight in the case of desk jobs. Ads and ad blocking are meaningless in comparison: what is the significance markets, money, and labour when the machines do all the work?
  - Florin_Andrei 10y ago
    > Strong AI is most likely to bring 2 outcomes: salvation (if we're very careful), or doom (the default outcome). Funny thing is, it's not like AI is going to make a landing here from outer space. It's not some external factor that we don't control. It's us who are building it. Any possible outcome could be avoided if we just stop working on it. I know this is not going to happen, but I feel this is the kind of obvious thing that ought to be stated once in a while.
    - dota_fanatic 10y ago

0942v8653 10y ago

Also see "Sight", another short film with a similar premise: https://vimeo.com/46304267 https://vimeo.com/46304267

leephillips 10y ago
This is worth watching for the end credits especially.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Credits are pretty cool. I haven't watched them before (I've seen the video, but didn't pay attention past the end of the action). One thing I've noticed is an interesting design dark pattern. If you look at the "stats" of the film crew, you can see that the "level 0" of the bars is past the label - which, without a low stat to compare with, makes them look longer than they should be. Not sure if they did this on purpose to bring some point across or not, but this kind of stuff happens often in real-world publications and is done to mislead readers.

Karunamon 10y ago

This same person did another movie along the same lines a while ago - this one in the home. I think the hyper-reality got quite a bit more hyper since last time... https://vimeo.com/8569187 https://vimeo.com/8569187 There's an interesting mechanic there. The person is seen modifying the advertising intensity while something to do with money comes up on the UI. It looks like you get paid to sit in crazy ad land, use the "service" for free with less (but still ridiculous) ads, and presumably, you'd pay for ad-free.

kdamken 10y ago
The implication you'd have to pay to not have your wallpaper be made of ads is by far the most depressing part of this video. Reminds me of this episode of Black Mirror (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits) that takes place in the future. In your room there are ads everywhere, and if you're not looking it stops and yells at you. To not see them you have to pay money.
- Bartkusa 10y ago
  My Amazon Kindle and Fire Tablet already do this. I would need to pay $15 for the ability to skin my Fire's lockscreen. (Although it's much easier to not look at my devices, than to not look at my apartment's walls.)

hosh 10y ago

I saw this last week. I couldn't tell whether it was utopia or dystopia, yet recognized how many of the present-day technology and trends will result in something like that. Seeing it all together in a first-person perspective like that was startling. Dukkha, that is, the existential anguish (Sisiphyus) is present, whether technology is sophisticated enough or not. Technology cannot address dukkha. It also resembled some of the psychedelic experiences I had, yet not quite -- for example, the way colors overlay the streets and grocery store aisle is close, and yet, the sense that the symbols overlaying are conscious, sentient, and alive is missing. The way you move through space and have the visual and audio overlay change the space around you reminds me of some of the way journeying happens. It is also interesting how, when the devices rebooted and the colors of the world bled out, gives the same kind of contrast that some people feel when their initial spiritual awakening experience fades. Lastly, in a psychedelic experience, there is a connection between the inner experience and the outer experience; this set of technology does not give that sense.

purplerabbit 10y ago
You need to see "Enter the Void"
- hosh 10y ago
  How come?
  - nyolfen 10y ago
    it's entirely shot in a continuous first person like this video, but incorporates explicitly psychedelic elements. the first scene of the film has the protagonist smoking DMT and showing the visuals, which persist to some degree through the film
    - hosh 10y ago
      Sure, that's great. Or I can meditate or do a ceremony and get a first-hand journey like that. Why watch a film?* In Hyper-Reality, it's showing an experience where mainstream access to VR and AR gives mainstream access to some of the psychedelic experiences, and what that says about our civilization, and what's coming in the future. When I read the Wikipedia entry for "Enter the Void" does not seem as interesting to me. * I do watch films like this. My point though isn't that Hyper Reality resembles a psychedelic experience, but that it gives us a glimpse of the future where pseudo-psychedelic consciousness shift is available in the mainstream, and part of the fabric of every day experience.

newobj 10y ago

Mostly inevitable, a little terrifying, but also some really creative use cases I'd never pondered there, especially highlighting the street when traffic is about to come through. There's probably a lot more interesting ideas to ponder in this video then just "boo hoo ads", if you can "open your mind, Quaid"...

monk_e_boy 10y ago
In David Brins "Existence" he has this exact same AR, where the government controls some channels, there are other commercial channels and hacker channels. I think it's a really neat idea. In his world there were also tiny cameras everywhere and you could connect to them (for a tiny price) view the feed and any recordings.
flanbiscuit 10y ago
The scifi-cyberpunk-geek in me can't wait for wearables like this! This is an exaggerated view of what can happen but also not too unfathomable. And yes there we'll be ads and unnecessary gamification, but like you noticed in the video, there will also be very useful technology as well. Some positive things I took away from this: - Real-time language translation - integrating map and directions into your view - (as you mentioned) clear and evident warnings that you couldn't cross the street - be able to add more information about products at stores. I know this similar to advertising, but if you're at a grocery store and are able to get more info about products immediately, I see that a plus. - The fact that you have an HUD for all your apps helps reduce "text-neck" sprain and also allows for ease of walking and and being on your device. - Fashion. The one person who attacked her, while that part being a negative experience, her body was covered in videos. I can foresee the fashion industry becoming more involved with this tech. (I think Snow Crash dealt with this in the virtual world part of the novel)
- tedd4u 10y ago
  I think the attacker has camouflage that obscures their identity. Also I believe the attacker used her blood to do bypass biometric verification and fully take over her account (draining all her points). If you liked this video I'd highly recommend two episodes of the British series "Black Mirror." Check out "Fifteen Million Merits" and "The Entire History of You." List of Black Mirror episodes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Black_Mirror_episodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Black_Mirror_episodes

purplerabbit 10y ago

This reminds me of "Enter the Void". Both films are in first person, and draw emphasis to the difference between external reality and personal perception. New "augmented reality" stuff is super interesting to me because it's basically the means of creating a shared illusion. So, like a drug trip, but more social and controlled. Basically like video games, but way larger in scale and social reach :) Thoughts?

TeMPOraL 10y ago
My thought? Not sure if I want a lot of that illusion to be shared. I wish AR would be used to really augment people, and that for me implies a degree of customization. This topic is super interesting to me too. I just don't want it to look like on that video...
- purplerabbit 10y ago
  I'm with you on your last point. But I really don't think that this film is an accurate representation of what it'll be like at all. Unless you really wanted to make it that way for yourself, which neither you nor I would want
- scotty79 10y ago
  Movie seems to indicate lots of customization. Same yoghurt is branded/marketed differently when see as 'Emillio'. Dog pet shopping assistant becomes scantily clad women.
losteric 10y ago
> New "augmented reality" stuff is super interesting to me because it's basically the means of creating a shared illusion. So, like a drug trip, but more social and controlled. Basically like video games, but way larger in scale and social reach :) Would you want to be constantly immersed in a video game with your friends/family? Or even the same social groups? That idea does nothing for me... it's actually a huge turn-off from AR. If I just wanted trippy graphics with friends, I'd go on a shroom camping trip with friends. In my mind, AR is about automating and building context. It's the first cybernetic, tightly integrating our visual/auditory senses with technology. Video games, re-skinning reality, omnipresent advertising... none of that will surprise me, that's updating current applications to use new technology. Boring. What about new applications? Imagine working on a car engine and hitting a snag, snapping off a seized bolt head for example. AR should recognize that I'm staring at a car engine, grunting in frustration, with elevated heart rate/sweat and other physiological symptoms of stress. The application should use those signals to look at my contact list (integrating their social media context) and suggest calling a mechanically inclined friend for advice. It should know that I hate animated graphics covering my work and simply talk, telling me that John might be able to help out if I buy him some beer. At some point it might even be smart enough to warn me against snapping the bolt head in the first place.. Or imagine project management style stuff. AR should know I'm 24 minutes away from my next meeting by foot and tell me to start walking (offering to reserve a taxi at the same time). Once I start walking, AR should automatically start giving me meeting prep (notes I prepared beforehand, meeting invite body, who's on the meeting invite list, etc). It should also show me a line that will take me all the way to the meeting room, and highlight the right button on any elevators on the way. Imagine I'm painting a large canvas piece. Instead of lugging around a handful of sketches, putting them away and taking them out every time I work on the piece, AR can display (or even overlay) hundreds of sketches (letting me position them as I see fit). It can remind me that a particular part of the canvas is still wet, or when I can start painting over a section. Even better, it could show me contextual paint reviews when I'm at the shop... recommending certain brands because the colors dry true, or any number of personally relevant metrics (pulled from past internet search history). Augmented reality: Adding to reality. Virtual reality: Replacing reality.

kdamken 10y ago

The little shopping cart dog in this video reminds me how much I hate "gamification" in everyday products and services. It's rarely something that enhances your experience, and is there simply to separate you from your hard earned dollars. If I want to be "gamified", I'll play the video game I purchased on my gaming machine.

binarymax 10y ago
Yeah but that scene was so on point! Especially how there is a cut to the next scene and the dog is wearing a hat, implying some achievement. Such a great series of videos. Extremely well done, and horrifying because it seems plausible (even if only a little).
- kdamken 10y ago
  Haha it certainly was. I noticed that too. Even worse a part of me totally wanted to deck my virtual pet out in a top hat as well.
  - jerf 10y ago
    Well, that's the thing, isn't it? We don't decry this stuff because it doesn't work, we decry it because it does. With years of practice, I've metaphorically calloused myself against a lot of these things now. For instance, I'm nearly immune to the stupid "play half a commercial, post link to 'see how it ends'" technique I see every few months. By "immune" I don't mean that I no longer feel the draw, but that it is no longer anywhere near enough for me to actually do anything about it. But it took effort, and I find myself wondering, is there anything else I'm giving up to have that metaphorical callous? What are the consequences of the brain adaptations necessary to function under this constant cognitive assault? (And I'm not at all sure the answer is easy. "More alienation" or "less empathy" are really snap answers, but at the level of detail I'm interested in, also vacuous. I'd really love to know but probably never will.)
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Series of videos? There's more than one (and that other old one about making tea)?

pdkl95 10y ago

Is "hyper" used in the "hyper-active" sense? The video is portraying augmented reality (as satire about current marketing practices and corporate attempts to minmax everything). If I understand Baudrillard correctly, Disneyland or "reality" TV are hyperreal. To be hyperreal, wouldn't you would have to believe all the augmented ads/etc in the video were reality?

r8ssi 10y ago

Wonderfully done. Both this and the Domestic Robocop one they did six years ago linked by 'Karunamon. I appreciate the density. Lots of detail to read into. Two pieces this was reminiscent of and I'd suggest, if you're interested, are: Black Mirror especially Series 1 Episode 2 "Fifteen Million Merits" and Terry Gilliam's Zero Theorem

PavlovsCat 10y ago
That "speech" in that Black Mirror episode for me is up there with the "Network" rant. > All we know is fake fodder and buying shit. That's how we speak to each other, how we express ourselves, is buying shit. What, I have a dream? The peak of our dreams is a new app for our Dopple, it doesn't exist! It's not even there! We buy shit that's not even there. Show us something real and free and beautiful. You couldn't. Yeah? It'd break us. We're too numb for it.

asadlionpk 10y ago

Btw the creator Kickstarted this video: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/723600195/hyper-reality-a-new-vision-of-the-future https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/723600195/hyper-reality...

Kiro 10y ago

I know it's supposed to be dystopian but I can't wait until this is reality.

coenhyde 10y ago

You have to use your hands? That's a babies toy! Seriously though. People are too lazy to use their hands to navigate an invisible interface. It's a lot more work than using a mouse and keyboard.

Loughla 10y ago
I don't know that it's laziness, as much as just fighting human evolution. With nothing to actually touch, touch-based interfacing with things isn't very easy. Our fingers are literally designed to feel input, not to act as a simple stylus for our optic nerve. And anyway, this type of invisible interface makes you look dumb (http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-10-12 http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-10-12).
- scotty79 10y ago
  Probably future UI will be people touching themselves and only occasionally waving in the air.

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beamatronic 10y ago

I want this, but only if I can control exactly what I can see.

scotty79 10y ago
probably same way you do with the web, bit of css here and there, some plugin that drops contents from some sources wholesale...

rawnlq 10y ago

At 4:00 you can see that not much of the world has actually changed other than having tracking markers added everywhere: https://imgur.com/ffgbpjb https://imgur.com/ffgbpjb. So the tech depicted here is actually less advanced than we what we have today (Hololens etc are all trackerless). Other than having a compact form for glasses this kind of reality is achievable in just a couple more years. Despite the theme of the video I am looking forward to it. The first decade of having the internet sucked too with geocities design and crazy popups/viruses on every click. But I wouldn't choose an alternate reality where the internet didn't exist at all. We should be more optimistic that all of these UI issues will be figured out once it actually gets adoption.

DasIch 10y ago
You forget about batteries. We are probably able to do VR/AR stuff like this in a few years but we won't have the energy to implement them as wearables. It will take a lot of progress or some kind of massive breakthrough in battery technology to actually produce good non-trivial wearables.
- rawnlq 10y ago
  The hololens can already last 5.5 hours so it doesn't seem that impossible of a problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AADEqLIALk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AADEqLIALk. The dealbreaker right now seems to be resolution and a narrow field of view where it "is like standing 2 feet away from a 15″ monitor". As someone not in this field, I have no idea if the remaining problems are going to take more than another few years to solve but I hope not!
  - DasIch 10y ago
    5.5h is nothing. It's not long enough that you can use it the entire day, it's not even long enough in a work environment. 5.5h may be enough for gaming or something but apart from that, it's just too limiting. Additionally to that the Hololens is also quite bulky, so it's not like you can sacrifice on the design to create more battery capacity. It already doesn't look like something anyone would want to wear outside. Even if you improve the battery capacity, increase efficiency of the hardware and software and you still have something you can't really sell anyone as a AR-utopia level device, just on account of that design. I'd expect it to take at least a decade until you'll see regular people wearing AR glasses regularly as a personal device during their daily life.

partycoder 10y ago

If anything I would appreciate an AR that FILTERED content.

zardo 10y ago
Remove ugly things from the world and replace them with beautiful things. I think that might be something that people would put weird glasses on for.
- partycoder 10y ago
  Or auto format poor code

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

We are working really hard to make the underlying infrastructure of this type of interface a reality. I think every day about how to build these capabilities, without them becoming overwhelming like you see in the video. Everything from how to interface (gesture actually sucks: non-haptic, unnatural), to how to serve contextual data using natural visual input without relying on engineered visual markers (QR codes etc...). We have come a long way from the infrastructure perspective (mobile visual mapping and re-localization) and are really looking forward to having better visual interfaces - though they are years away from becoming mainstream. One other thing that nobody has commented on, that is critical to these systems working is having content. 3D content is an order of magnitude harder to build than 2D content, so that is also a big focus of ours.

sillysaurus3 10y ago
3D content is an order of magnitude harder to build than 2D content Not really. It requires a different process and a different training regimen. ZBrush makes 3D content creation easy enough that you can be done with the dog model in the video in a matter of minutes, but only if you're trained with ZBrush.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  but only if you're trained with ZBrush Only proving my point - but not really taking it far enough. If I asked the average designer to give me an image of a dog for my website/app etc... they could do it incredibly easy. Either get a dog and take a picture with a regular camera, maybe crop and edit or find/edit many of the ones you see now in well known software. If I asked that same group to make me a 3D model of a dog it would be literally orders of magnitude more complex. Knowing a 3D interface takes quite a bit of time. Building the model, especially if you want any kind of accuracy, even moreso.
  - sillysaurus3 10y ago
    That group isn't qualified to do the task that you're asking them to do. There are different types of artists. A 3D artist isn't the same as a 2D artist, which isn't the same as a designer. It wouldn't make sense to ask a devop to write you a website, then claim that webdev was an order of magnitude more difficult than devops.

nsxwolf 10y ago

I thought the part where her device was rebooted was chilling. I had never considered that a fully augmented reality could lead to a real world stripped of all its aesthetics to make room for AR target images to support the graphic overlays. And if everyone is lost in their own audio visual world, why should a grocery store even play background music anymore? It would be a sterile, alien world with your visor or whatever turned off.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
What you seem to call aesthetics I personally call "ad litter". I think this type of AR-enabled world could be much prettier than the one we have today. Imagine how beautiful it would look if all ads moved to virtual reality and you turned off your AR set. Speaking of which, one of the best features I could imagine for full-field-of-view AR would be an ad blocker for physical world.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  But not just ads - artwork, facades, human-readable street signs, just about anything could be on the chopping block to enable a better AR experience. Imagine grinding the friezes off the Parthenon and replacing them with checkerboard patterns to enable 3D animated ones.
djsumdog 10y ago
Lately I wear my headphones at the grocery store, and on the train. Part of it was culture shock; returning to the US and suddenly being able to understand everyone in a room, all the time. It was super overwhelming. Now I keep doing it because I hate people. I hate human interaction. I hate the shitty music and adverts I hear in grocery stores. I prefer the self checkout and I can usually pack my bags better anyway.
jpindar 10y ago
I don't think that's a loss - I wear headphones when I go grocery shopping to avoid the background music.

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powertower 10y ago

If there is such a thing as the Illuminati, that is bent on destroying the human spirit - this is what I imagine their plans for the future world would entail.

l33tbro 10y ago

The extreme isolation here got under my skin. The immediacy and tangibility of all these illusory elements is frightening, particularly for children born into this environment. Even if we solve the design issues, we remain sequestered in a simulation where there seems to be no respite. Guess I'm a sucker for authenticiy, whatever that still means. Congrats to the filmmaker here for dramatizing extreme virtuality with nuanced storytelling.

djsumdog 10y ago
Authenticity is... http://catandgirl.com/?p=2291 http://catandgirl.com/?p=2291

pYQAJ6Zm 10y ago

What I found most disturbing in this short is how devoid of a personality the protagonist seems to be. She appears at times bored, annoyed, exhausted, lost – and all of these, yes, are marks of an individuality still present – but what happened after the AR hijack was revealing: after a moment of disorientation, once her AR system got back online, she simply walked to the closest AR stimulus, and promptly entered the game. This one happened to be a game of a Catholicist theme, but could probably have been about anything else. Her lack of pause, her willingness to enter a new game just for relief, for purpose, show how empty the protagonist is. This world seems one where the self is constructed mostly from the gamified narratives of the AR system, whose creation mechanism is not revealed, but appears to lie completely beyond the reach of its consumers. Here there are, I think, hints of a free, wildly competitive market not only of goods and services, but most importantly of identities. If something like this is in reach of our (imminent) technology, I hope we have the sense to avoid it becoming a reality.

In2TheBoundless 10y ago

Reminds me a bit of "Flicker", by Porter Robinson (music video)

In2TheBoundless 10y ago

Reminds me a little of Porter Robinson's flicker (music video). Recently I read a Scientific American article that suggested there may be a link between navigational ability and memory. If that's true, then push to "Always On" GPS/Navigational Support could have deleterious effects on our capacity for memory (this was one idea in the article)

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ashitlerferad 10y ago

Looks like it could be a Black Mirror episode.