Augmented Reality, or computer mediated reality, is already all around us. Although we may not be able to buy The Terminator’s glasses or Jordy LaForge’s ocular implants, the world of fully immersive computer mediated experiences that blend the real world and the digital are not far off.

At a recent brainstorming session, we talked about the promises and pitfalls of this emerging technology as well as some of our own ideas on the possibilities of Augmented Reality. To give some focus to our vision, we each created cards describing the features that could come out of this emerging technology.

Check out the photos on Facebook

A Little History

Augmented Reality could be said to have it’s roots in a famously abandoned technology of the early computer revolution, Virtual Reality. Speculators ranging from Timothy Leary to William Gibson had dreams of building fully immersive 3d virtual worlds. Suits encased the user literally in bulky helmets and gloves, sometimes full body suits – and at their most extreme, buckled harnesses attached to human sized centrifugal hoops designed to free the user from the bounds of gravity. Unfortunately the dream exceeded the technology of the time. Virtual Reality never took off in large part because computers able to handle the amount of raw data needed to continuously render convincing interactive 3d worlds simply was too expensive and cumbersome for the average consumer.

Augmented Reality became a kind of middle ground. A staging area where the ideas and techniques of a virtual interactive 3d world could be tested by mixing them with real world objects and locations. On one end, exhaustive and exacting GPS coordinating became possible enabling geolocation accuracy down to a few feet and closing every day.

The real world was mapped and digested into numbers and fed into computers all over the world, creating a exhaustive, immense, and self-perpetuating mosaic of a world more detailed than the most thorough fantasy realm. The advance of personal portable computers in the form of PDAs and Smart phones has given rise to an already existing unseen virtual world growing up all around us. Best of all this virtual world is hosted in an ever expanding wireless web; cloud computing is slowly but surely breaking down the limitations of storage capacity and information access.

On the other hand, immersive multiplayer virtual worlds have grown both in popularity and sophistication. Two examples being the ever prevalent World of Warcraft (just one of many online communities who’s virtual economic system has grown so large and complex that it has given rise to cottage industries of ‘gold farmers’ who buy and trade virtual items for real world currency) and the recently released Skyrim, which has dazzled audiences and critics with it’s level of immersion and sophistication. In the last few years however, each of these splintered fields has been increasingly linked to create powerful applications which overlay the virtual world onto the physical.

The Writing On The Wall

One of the most familiar uses of Augmented Reality is in sports. Many people are familiar with the yellow ‘first down’ line in Football which appears to actually be painted on the field but is really generated by computer in real time, but many other sports use the technology to display advertising on empty playing field walls.

Applications on Android and iPhones can supply a kind of computer-mediated vision of the world. Some display simple things such as maps and information about surrounding points – all with the aid of location-identifying GPS coordinators, while others directly overlay the position of the planetary bodies, stars, and satellites, or real-time special effects such as laser blasts and explosions. While these early uses of Augmented reality may seem, at their best, like simple expansions on existing technologies, and at their worst gimmicky novelties, AR has the very real potential to change everything about how humans interact with the world. From advertising to architecture there is nothing off limits to AR.

As computers creep from the desk, to our pockets, weaving into our very clothes and perhaps some day our flesh, the question has  become not when, but how computers will mediate our lives. Will AR be used to supplant reality with a “better” version, to cover walls with virtual ads and fantastic vistas, or will it be used to enhance reality, to visualize once invisible depth and dimension to our the Real World User Experience?

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According to C3′s website, “three Northampton neighbors decided to take their fences down and combine their yards to create a larger space for shared recreation and food production.” The goal was to create a Permaculture site, which C3 defines as:

…a vision, design system, and global network that draws on patterns and principles found in nature to meet human needs, while regenerating the natural world and creating abundance we can share.

The students redesigned the shared backyards into a sustainable open space,  taking down the barriers of the three neighboring backyards and integrating them into one cohesive shared area for recreation and sustainable gardens. The goal is to inspire others in the community to open to the idea of turning neighboring land into shared space for the community to gather around.

The presentation consisted of a number of design possibilities. The various options which the team of UMass students had assembled ranged from the more conservative rearrangement of bushes and minor terraforming to the highly progressive, with much of the shared backyards transformed into a super efficient organic farm powered by animals complete with rice paddies and greenhouses heated by chickens. Owen Freeman-Daniels, newly elected Ward 3 City Councilman, owns a condo on part of the property used for this project. He told our Director of Marketing that he hoped his neighbors were interested in pursuing the concept. The turnout was exceptional, with more people in attendance than the space could accommodate. Many passersby were poking in to see what the gathering was about. Each mini-presentation was followed by a short Q&A session where members of the community could gain further insight in each proposal. The group was then invited to stay and take a closer look at the various proposals drawn up by the students, as well as ask any further questions to the presenters.  Check out our gallery of photos to see the audience and designs. It was a great success, with a lot of interesting new ideas about utilizing the ever-decreasing open spaces that we have here in Northampton’s Ward 3.

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My Words Are My Shelter, Mira’s project, is aiming to donate a box of journals and pens and pencils for each woman at the shelter.  Any proceeds above the cost of the journals will be donated to the Center.  If you want to and have the ability to help her out, please visit her blog.

If you would like to find out how to help out women’s and homeless shelters closer to home and are in MA, you can find the shelter near you at the Massachusetts Coalition for Homelessness website.

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The memory palace, also known as the method of loci, is a technique of placing information or memories in an imagined spatial context to help in remembering those things.  Building memory in this way takes the rememberer on a journey of images and places.  Author and artist Mira Bartók in her new book, The Memory Palace, takes her reader on such a journey through her own shattered memories.  Mira’s memoir relates the pain of growing up with a schizophrenic mother, and the continued impact her mother had on her and her sister’s lives.  Written after Mira had sustained a severe brain injury in a car accident, the book is as much about her story as it is about the act of remembering that story.

The book’s release date is January 11, 2011, so keep a look out for it at your local bookstore (independent booksellers are awesome, find one near you)!

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In a collaboration with Masci Webdesign, Skytemple’s own Leah, Jen and Kelly have programmed and tested a new online archive and teaching aide, Emerging America.  Commissioned by the Collaborative for Educational Services, Emerging America and its online exhibits are providing easy access to primary sources for teachers to incorporate into the teaching of history as it relates to Northampton, Florence, Hadley and surrounding areas of Western Massachusetts. The website is a fantastic resource, highlighting pieces of local history to create an entry point and fuller picture of historical events and issues as a whole.

One of the online exhibits, Radical Equality (1842-1847) details the activities of a group of local abolitionists who founded an utopian community.  They called themselves the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (NAEI) and in the four years of the community’s activity they gained the attention of many notable people, including Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and David Ruggles.  The NAEI supported their democratic and egalitarian principles by manufacturing silk thread, finding a way to function in the newly industrialized world, free of slave labor.  The site presents letters, photographs, newspaper articles and many other primary sources that illuminate the ground-breaking undertakings of the NAEI and its members.

Recently, Curtiss and Leah joined the Collaborative for Educational Services for the website unveiling at the Historic Northampton Museum.

Congratulations to all involved for the launching of a unique and important website!

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