4 ms·

Augmented Urban Reality

38 points by kawera 10y ago

okket 10y ago
See also "Hyper-Reality" https://vimeo.com/166807261 https://vimeo.com/166807261
- Animats 10y ago
  "Hyper-Reality" is very impressive. That's a good picture of what consumer-grade augmented reality might well look like that. "Hyper-Reality" addresses the real issues with augmented reality - as with touchscreens, output is good, input sucks, and you have to design around that. They use mostly voice and simple picking. Their overlays on reality don't have much fine detail, so they can tolerate a little misalignment. It's ad-heavy, yet still usable. It tries to be friendly, but is sort of obnoxious. That really is an augmented urban reality, and from the point of view of a poor girl in Medellin, not the usual bro types that appear in most VR/AR materials. They really nailed this. (The parent article is more like clickbait. Sad, for the New Yorker.)
harshreality 10y ago
What's the lineage and what are examples of this concept in (science) fiction? There's Snow Crash and Rainbows End, but what else?
- doublerebel 10y ago
  Dennou Coil (anime tv series) is one of my favorites, and the kind of AR I hope we actually see. Less overwhelming and commercial and more functional and restrained. Also I consider the "datumplane" from Hyperion novels to provide a lot of the functionality of the modern AI-ssistent or AR tools we are currently imagining.
- jcl 10y ago
  FWIW, William Gibson's Spook Country has a protagonist who researches virtual geotagged art exhibits.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  It features in some of Vinge's other works. I suppose particularly A Deepness in the Sky. Alistair Reynolds Revelation Space novels riff on it quite a lot, to the point of several characters that exist more on the augmented side of the reality than in the real world.
piercebot 10y ago
> America’s brainiac class has generally regarded cities with fear and distaste. > If the automobile caused us to disperse, the information age seems, paradoxically, to be drawing us back together. Is the author suggesting that technology will encourage the intellectual elite back towards cities? I'm a little confused as to how the introduction ties to the rest of the article.
jsemrau 10y ago
I am so eternally grateful this concept is getting traction now! Having spend a large portion of the last 4 years building up tenqyu, which solves location-based augmented reality with easier parking, engaging urban sports games, and global event aggregation. Happiness!
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  You claim your.... app/framework/company thing "solves location-based augmented reality". This sounds like marketing-blurb. What do those words placed in this order actually mean in practice and why is location-based augmented reality even a thing which needs to be solved? How do "engaging urban sports games" contribute to its solution? How does it relate to this article - does any component besides the Singapore-centric parking-garage app actually contribute meaningfully to urban infrastructure?
  - johnchristopher 10y ago
    How about asking nicely ?
    - jsemrau 10y ago
      Thanks ;-)
  - jsemrau 10y ago
    The problem here is not the technology per se. Technology is only an enabler. The problem is that in urban areas in Asia let's say Heibei + Beijing 100 million people, Greater Tokyo/ Osaka 60 million people, Jakarta, Delhi, Bangkok each 10 million + people, inclusion is a massive problem. Here in Asia, exists tower sprawl where people anonymously exists for years. That is easily the birth-ground for anonymization which leads to seclusion and radicalization. An example are the Japanese hikkikomori. On the mobility side, I just returned from Chennai. Lookup on Youtube traffic in Chennai. This is pure chaos. My company helps governments across Asia to plan better cities because through my data they know where and when people play, drive, park, go to events. That helps for healthier cities, because new streets can be build and parks and sports centers can be build at the right locations. We give data to justify millions of dollar in urban development. See, drop!in for example is marketed as a travel app. But it provides a wonderful meta-data-source where events are happening and how many people go there. That knowledge can lead to better organization of public transportation to and from the events. In addition, this app is community building by bringing in people with similar interest together who might have not met otherwise. Btw, it might or might not interest you, but all apps are powered by the same back-end giving us the consolidated picture.
fennecfoxen 10y ago
Disappointment. The problem in New York (and heck, in San Francisco) is that there's very little capacity and a lot of people to use it. One doesn't use an app or sensor-enabled sign to find where to park in Manhattan: you pay for a monthly space in a garage so that you're bleeding slightly less money and so that you have a consistent place to park, or you just use transit like everyone else. One doesn't use free wifi from random kiosks: you buy a cell phone plan so that you can have wireless anywhere (and you install the app to send you a notice when your preferred subway line melts down). Dynamically adjusted parking schemes will not be a welcome component of anyone's day to day life and commute. The traffic-planning data is a marginal improvement over running those little wires over the street to count cars, I suppose, and mmmaybe will help for special events? The hype is too much. You know what would deserve infrastructure hype? Use traffic data to adjust a real network of driverless cars or something that substantially improves capacity. These nonsense kiosks will probably help out some lost tourists, but the rest of New Yorkers will gleefully ignore them. Bringing up real infrastructure achievements like sewers just makes these look puny. We see the real motivation at the bottom of the article: targeting advertisements with wifi sniffing. The rest is just part of a sell job.
Dowwie 10y ago
I think that we are now confronted with a decision similar to that which EU made about freedom from tracking, but evolved. The kiosks have video cameras in them. Information from kiosks across all 5 boroughs will be processed in real time, aggregated, and mined. This is a big data dream for Alphabet, who will combine street-level activity with information acquired from user's android phones. In exchange for providing Alphabet with valuable insight, civilians get free high speed wifi and some other goodies. Sidewalk Labs, who acquired the creator of the NYC kiosks and operates them is an Alphabet company. I encourage everyone to read through their privacy policy [1]. http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doitt/downloads/pdf/Proposed-PCS-Franchise-Exhibit-2-CityBridge-Privacy-Policy.pdf http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doitt/downloads/pdf/Proposed-PCS-...

38 points by kawera 10y ago

okket 10y ago

See also "Hyper-Reality" https://vimeo.com/166807261 https://vimeo.com/166807261

Animats 10y ago
"Hyper-Reality" is very impressive. That's a good picture of what consumer-grade augmented reality might well look like that. "Hyper-Reality" addresses the real issues with augmented reality - as with touchscreens, output is good, input sucks, and you have to design around that. They use mostly voice and simple picking. Their overlays on reality don't have much fine detail, so they can tolerate a little misalignment. It's ad-heavy, yet still usable. It tries to be friendly, but is sort of obnoxious. That really is an augmented urban reality, and from the point of view of a poor girl in Medellin, not the usual bro types that appear in most VR/AR materials. They really nailed this. (The parent article is more like clickbait. Sad, for the New Yorker.)

harshreality 10y ago

What's the lineage and what are examples of this concept in (science) fiction? There's Snow Crash and Rainbows End, but what else?

doublerebel 10y ago
Dennou Coil (anime tv series) is one of my favorites, and the kind of AR I hope we actually see. Less overwhelming and commercial and more functional and restrained. Also I consider the "datumplane" from Hyperion novels to provide a lot of the functionality of the modern AI-ssistent or AR tools we are currently imagining.
jcl 10y ago
FWIW, William Gibson's Spook Country has a protagonist who researches virtual geotagged art exhibits.
maxerickson 10y ago
It features in some of Vinge's other works. I suppose particularly A Deepness in the Sky. Alistair Reynolds Revelation Space novels riff on it quite a lot, to the point of several characters that exist more on the augmented side of the reality than in the real world.

piercebot 10y ago

> America’s brainiac class has generally regarded cities with fear and distaste. > If the automobile caused us to disperse, the information age seems, paradoxically, to be drawing us back together. Is the author suggesting that technology will encourage the intellectual elite back towards cities? I'm a little confused as to how the introduction ties to the rest of the article.

jsemrau 10y ago

I am so eternally grateful this concept is getting traction now! Having spend a large portion of the last 4 years building up tenqyu, which solves location-based augmented reality with easier parking, engaging urban sports games, and global event aggregation. Happiness!

fennecfoxen 10y ago
You claim your.... app/framework/company thing "solves location-based augmented reality". This sounds like marketing-blurb. What do those words placed in this order actually mean in practice and why is location-based augmented reality even a thing which needs to be solved? How do "engaging urban sports games" contribute to its solution? How does it relate to this article - does any component besides the Singapore-centric parking-garage app actually contribute meaningfully to urban infrastructure?
- johnchristopher 10y ago
  How about asking nicely ?
  - jsemrau 10y ago
    Thanks ;-)
- jsemrau 10y ago
  The problem here is not the technology per se. Technology is only an enabler. The problem is that in urban areas in Asia let's say Heibei + Beijing 100 million people, Greater Tokyo/ Osaka 60 million people, Jakarta, Delhi, Bangkok each 10 million + people, inclusion is a massive problem. Here in Asia, exists tower sprawl where people anonymously exists for years. That is easily the birth-ground for anonymization which leads to seclusion and radicalization. An example are the Japanese hikkikomori. On the mobility side, I just returned from Chennai. Lookup on Youtube traffic in Chennai. This is pure chaos. My company helps governments across Asia to plan better cities because through my data they know where and when people play, drive, park, go to events. That helps for healthier cities, because new streets can be build and parks and sports centers can be build at the right locations. We give data to justify millions of dollar in urban development. See, drop!in for example is marketed as a travel app. But it provides a wonderful meta-data-source where events are happening and how many people go there. That knowledge can lead to better organization of public transportation to and from the events. In addition, this app is community building by bringing in people with similar interest together who might have not met otherwise. Btw, it might or might not interest you, but all apps are powered by the same back-end giving us the consolidated picture.

fennecfoxen 10y ago

Disappointment. The problem in New York (and heck, in San Francisco) is that there's very little capacity and a lot of people to use it. One doesn't use an app or sensor-enabled sign to find where to park in Manhattan: you pay for a monthly space in a garage so that you're bleeding slightly less money and so that you have a consistent place to park, or you just use transit like everyone else. One doesn't use free wifi from random kiosks: you buy a cell phone plan so that you can have wireless anywhere (and you install the app to send you a notice when your preferred subway line melts down). Dynamically adjusted parking schemes will not be a welcome component of anyone's day to day life and commute. The traffic-planning data is a marginal improvement over running those little wires over the street to count cars, I suppose, and mmmaybe will help for special events? The hype is too much. You know what would deserve infrastructure hype? Use traffic data to adjust a real network of driverless cars or something that substantially improves capacity. These nonsense kiosks will probably help out some lost tourists, but the rest of New Yorkers will gleefully ignore them. Bringing up real infrastructure achievements like sewers just makes these look puny. We see the real motivation at the bottom of the article: targeting advertisements with wifi sniffing. The rest is just part of a sell job.

Dowwie 10y ago

I think that we are now confronted with a decision similar to that which EU made about freedom from tracking, but evolved. The kiosks have video cameras in them. Information from kiosks across all 5 boroughs will be processed in real time, aggregated, and mined. This is a big data dream for Alphabet, who will combine street-level activity with information acquired from user's android phones. In exchange for providing Alphabet with valuable insight, civilians get free high speed wifi and some other goodies. Sidewalk Labs, who acquired the creator of the NYC kiosks and operates them is an Alphabet company. I encourage everyone to read through their privacy policy [1]. http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doitt/downloads/pdf/Proposed-PCS-Franchise-Exhibit-2-CityBridge-Privacy-Policy.pdf http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doitt/downloads/pdf/Proposed-PCS-...