Better Choices Through Technology
- Posted by: Cliff Kuang
- on June 25, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Can augmented reality technology finally make it easy to do the right thing?
Last week was huge for a young technology called “augmented reality”—and that’s important even if you’re not a nerd, because it should revolutionize the way we approach social causes. Sure, many current examples of augmented reality are trivial, but hear me out.
Augmented reality allows you to see, in real time, data about your surroundings. It’s different from having the internet on your phone—you don’t actually have to look anything up, and you don’t actually have to know exactly what you’re looking for. Augmented reality is more like a having a sixth sense—and a seventh and eighth sense—that makes data a natural, passive part of how you see the world.
So how does this work? Last week, a Dutch company, SPRXmobile, introduced the first-ever augmented-reality browser platform for a smartphone. It’s fairly simple to explain. The software uses two basic features found on smartphones—a compass, and a GPS system. From there, it knows exactly where you are—and, just as important, which direction your phone is pointing. And this is where things get interesting. Armed with that knowledge, SPRXmobile unveiled a rack of applications—including apps to find a nearby ATM, bar, or shoe store; figure out if a company nearby is hiring; identify houses around you that might be for sale; and even research the on-court action at Wimbledon. (Take a second to watch SPRXmobile’s amazing demo video.) So far, the app is only for phones running the Android operating system but it’s coming to the iPhone soon as well. (That’s why it was so important that the newest model, the 3G S, included a compass.)
This makes deep information about your surroundings available whenever you have your cell phone without you having to look anything up. When you let that possibility sink in, augmented reality’s massive promise becomes clear. If you were to boil a number of social causes—from depleted fisheries to carbon reduction—the central problem is that getting the right information to consumers takes so much money and effort. And consumers themselves have to spend too much time translating that new information into action.
With augmented reality you can download a program, and be presented with all of its stored wisdom just when that wisdom is relevant to what you’re doing. It then becomes vastly easier to imagine social causes translating into individual action on a large scale—the effort to learn about those causes and about discern what you should drops enormously when you have a cellphone that does the sifting for you, at the exact time that you need it.
Imagine the following scenarios. You’re in a new city. You’d like to skip on a rental car, and save the cash and the carbon. So you use an app on your phone to find the low-carbon alternatives. It guides you from your current location to the nearest public transit option, letting you know exactly what the schedules are—and, if you’re in a city with “smart” bus stops like Portland, even telling you, in real time, how far away the next bus is. You don’t have to be tethered to the bus station, hoping that things are running on time.
Or lets take another example: depleted fisheries. You walk into a fish restaurant. You point your phone at the door; it knows where you are, and it provides you with a list of fish that are the most environmentally friendly.
That’s just the beginning. Imagine you’re commuting to work, but you don’t have a car, and public transit isn’t an option out where you live. You boot up an app that alerts others in your car-sharing network where you are, matches you with a ride, and leads you—and your potential ride—to a meet-up point. It may sound unreal, but this technology is already being developed by Avego, among others.
Things really start to get nutty when you factor in another technology, QR codes. These function like barcodes that your cellphone can scan. You’ve already seen the codes popping up on shipping labels and such. Phones with QR-reading functionality will follow soon—in fact they’re already common in Japan (of course). When you snap a picture of a QR code, the image directs your phone to download information set by the code’s designer.
What if all the food in your grocery store was marked with a QR code—you could compare the carbon footprints of two batches of produce. Builders could use specialized apps inside a Home Depot to figure out how materials choices might translate to energy savings.
As I’ve written before, convenience is king when we’re talking about making better transportation choices. But that also applies to any worthy cause, if it’s ever to become truly mainstream.
Personally, I’ve long been a pessimist about our ability to meet challenges like climate change. Augmented reality has me more optimistic than I’ve ever been. Granted, it still takes a baseline level of interest for someone to take the time to download an app for a social cause. But compare that effort with what you’d otherwise have to put in to get involved with an issue like fisheries. There’s no contest. Augmented reality is the best chance we have to speed crucial information about our world to the people living in it.
DISCUSSION: 111 Comments
CliffReally cool article, i work with a company here in LA, Trigger, that has been working with augmented reality for sometime, they are actually using the technology in some products they are developing for CARE charitywould love to chat about this further if you get chance aduncan@lcoonline.com
Very exciting, and I totally agree that to push folks into make better choices for everyone, the choices have to be easy to make.
wow this is awesome the part about fisheries is so awesome especially with the amounts of mercury in fish and the amount of fish left in our oceans. Although it almost seems like it would make us either super alert of uber lazy.
Saving fish? Mercury levels? Green Alternatives…. Haaa good luck. This technology is going NOWHERE, until someone porn gets a hold of it. Good luck greenies.
This is very interesting. Never heard of it before. Wonder how you could apply this to education?
what?
Ever read Feed by M.T. Anderson? All those lovely, informational billboards and banners! Who will ever need to look up from a cellphone again? Imagine if we could build augmentational technology into our brains!
While I do see where this can be very helpful, I feel like all of this is making us too dependent on technology at the same time. It’s bad enough with 10 year olds running around only knowing their home-phone number as #5 on speed dial. Everything is becoming so impersonal and this is just another step.
It might help you make more “informed choices” not “better choices” I think the title is a little wacked.
Ever read 1984? This is not GOOD Green technology, this is complete surveillance
Sounds very GIGO to me.
Some nice potential provided the information is 100% accurate, objective, and ALL relevant information is provided – instead of political agenda-driven like most of the current news, where agencies responsible for reporting and analyzing information are selective about coverage provided and skewed in their conclusions.
…….otherwise you are looking at the most dangerous brainwashing device ever created.
Sounds CUTE, yet in actuality – NONSENSE. When they say our Society is ‘dumbing down’ – that is indeed WHY. Who gives a rat’s ass, where shoe store or company that’s hiring – that is purly an info ‘overload’. If I am looking for a job – I do NOT need to be reminded of, nor should they give me shoe stores, or grocery stores, if I am not there to shop – see how wasteful they are already? Why not create a BETTER engine that does something BETTER then googles, ms’s of the world.. ?? It would do us so much more justice… Let’s not ‘dumb down’, yet rather smart up.. with doing something that we actually NEED.. vs. just adding bs and mostly needless info….
My $.03
This is a fascinating article giving a glimpse of what the future will look like. To some extent, the “future” is already here as can be seen by exploring newer search services like TipTop at FeelTipTop.com TipTop works by harnessing the collective wisdom of all the people in the world by understanding their expressions in natural language (at present only on the Twitter messaging platform). The result is an up-to-the minute understanding of what is really happening in the world anywhere – a form of “augmented” reality not seen before. TipTop and other similar services will undoubtedly help people make better decisions in any sphere of personal and professional life.
I have been experimenting with a new kind of augmented reality. I take the need I currently have… which is to facilitate change within my own life. I want customizable multi touch technology and we are good to go. Make iphone three times bigger… full single handed input with screen. When we find a way to put comfort in to the celly or laptop or blackberry, then we are talking. Throw in projection technology into the mix, and wow… I am certianly on board. People look like cave men using cell phones. My invention is called Tabla Phone check it out or get it today at http://www.ideationsales.com. Be the first to have the future!
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This is interesting but TOTALLY unnecessary. “Have trouble pulling your underwear up? There’s an app for that.” Really, soon enough they’ll come with pacifiers so when you’re not incessantly chatting your mouth can be doing ~something~. You’re going to be sooo tied to these stupid smartphones that making decisions or finding data on your own is going to become a forgotten trait. Look away from the screen….yes, that’s the ~real~ world.
Save the planet from “climate change” buffs and Greenies are funny. The whole thing Is mostly based on faith and it uses the alarmist threat of “the end of the earth as we know it” to scare people into glossing over the real science. Sounds kinda like religion doesn’t it?
When Reality Isn’t EnoughA friend of mine, singer/songwriter Stephen Longfellow Fiske, wrote a song sometime ago in which the last refrain was,”we’ve got electronic toys all around us, but can the circuitry understand, the beauty of a misty morning, the touch of a hand.” – Electronic BoyIt saddens me that we (myself included) are suffering to varying degrees from Electronic Stimulus Addiction. I imagine that if we don’t somehow find a way to pull the plug, that before long, nature will be pulling the plug for us. Until then, happy navigating.
I’ll pass. I have my own “device” for making better choices: It’s called “intuition 1G”. It’s a “device” I’ll never lose, or have someone steal from me, or leave up to someone else to program to advance their agenda.
Becoming a complete Luddite has more and more appeal with each passing day…
Not many people ride the bus when they can afford a smart phone at least not in smaller cites. I think this technology will take to much infrastructure to make it perform and it needs to do more than what I can do in 5 minutes with just the internet.
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Doesn’t everyone realize this is all DESIGNED TO TRACK YOU, so you can be controlled. So they advertise to you whereever you are. So you can be found whereever you are. You’ll have no brains left of your own. It’s absolutely creepy and most of you cell phone weirdos can’t even see it.
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