Continued from previous article
Anyways, there is apparently a group called the Metaverse Roadmap Project that holds summits a couple times a year towards the realization of Stephenson's own metaverse (think I've already linked to it on wikipedia.) If you could, go check out their site. They have a lengthy 50 page document entailing the process needed to produce a viable metaverse. Studied areas include social, technological and economic trends that might produce an environment in which a metaverse could thrive to an enormous extent. There are ways the public (i.e. us) can contribute to the effort, among other things. Most informative, I found, was the overview.
The key here are the four different levels on which a metaverse could be implemented: Virtual Reality, Mirror Worlds, Augmented Reality, and Lifelogging. Augmented Reality is the one I'm interested in, the one that ties into last week's post, but I'll review them all for your sake.
Virtual Reality: A completely digital world, in which all action is governed either by programming or user input. This reality is separate and unique to RL. Best used to convey information not grounded in reality. The metaverse is most akin to this level, although the metaverse took into account in some fashion the next example by throwing users into the simulation based upon their access location. Examples: Second Life, There, Metaverse.
Mirror Worlds: RL digitized. Items in RL represented in code, compiled into a likeness of our own environment scaled locally or even globally. Serves as a way to explore RL without moving, or to gather information before travel. Examples: Google Earth, Google Maps. Certain islands in Second Life.
Augmented Reality: Layering onto RL features of VR. I'll go in depth in a second. Examples: Some prototype projects, a few military concepts, HUDs in video games. Rudimentally, GPS systems.
Lifelogging: Transferring RL features into a digital realm. Hard to explain, read the link for lengthier discussion. Examples: Podcasting, Flickr. Rudimentally, blogging.
Why focus on augmented reality? It has the greatest potential user base. It's not the average person that wants to submerge themselves within VR, and it's not convenient to do so either. Mirror worlds see enough use but are limited in contextual inference (they don't adapt to aid you in utilizing their services.) Lifelogging seems more for the obsessive and/or egotistical.
Let me sort of paint a picture of what the ideal implementation of AR, to me, would be. I know the article goes over a lot of this, but I sort of thought this up before reading the Roadmap's suggested implementation, so I wasn't aware what they had/hadn't thought of.
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So, a user has to go shopping for the day. They dress and as per routine throw their Cellphone/PDA into their pocket, slip on their AR Oakleys and hop in the car. Before they exit their driveway, they synch up the AROs with the CPDA (acronymz plz,) scroll quickly through their favorite addresses as in any GPS system and queue up the mall's location. Laid atop their vision rests an unobtrusive yet plainly visible path to follow. They turn their head to start the engine and the path rotates out of view. The AROs contain several key parts: A GPS system, probably more accurate/faster in the future, a 3D gyroscopic compass, relaying their head's angular coordinates to the CPDA, an accurate laser, invisible to the naked eye, bouncing itself off the nearest object in line of sight to determine its distance, and a projector beaming the image of the path onto the AROs' lenses. This should be fairly easy to follow- it's simple sci-fi stuff so far.
So the user follows the GPS-esque path to the mall, turning off distracting location tags (probably called loctags or something cool) while driving. Once parked, however, the user turns them back on, locks the car, and glances at the pop-up hovering over it, an icon resembling a vehicle with an arrow pointing down. The car, containing a GPS itself, has marked itself down on the user's CPDA for future reference. Crossing the parking lot, the user notes a loctag denoting a restaurant they haven't heard of. However, it's marked with a star; this indicates that those who reviewed restaurants similarly to the user reviewed this one highly. The user glances at it and punches a button on their CPDA. The laser, GPS and gyroscopes work together to loctag this as a landmark. The user, if they had more time, could delineate it a future destination, describe the location and upload it to the mirror world database(MWD), or block it from appearing in the AROs again.
Inside the mall a sleazy loctag ad, slipped through the MWD's security, beckons. The user takes a moment to block it and report the abuse. An Info icon beckons, the familiar encircled i resting above a large touchscreen display. The user approaches and waits the second for the Info kiosk to recognize their CPDA. A directory materializes on the screen and the user presses against the stores they wish to visit. In the bottom right of the AROs the store names flash quickly and fade, while directional arrows appear, colorcoded, indicating their locations. The user changes the display mode to Possible Interest only, and the myriad of loctags cluttering the screen fade, leaving only those starred.
During the walk, the user encounters a few other gargoyles, easily recognizable, their real names, or in most cases their metanames, hovering above their heads with a Gargoyle icon. The other shopgoers, for the most part, bear no indicators, but those carrying CPDAs without AROs, though technically not gargoyles. occasionally allow an identifier to hover above themselves. The user stops to correct a loctag; these work as flexibly as a wiki, although many loctags in corporate locations are sponsored and read-only. Simple information, like inbox checkups, weather, and schedule, are flipped through on the AROs as the user progresses. The electronics store he first enters is one of a few to adopt the new Quick Response codes (read the article, Japan uses these guys on public posters, which are read instantaneously by the right type of camera as data.) Of course these aren't the old 2D type; the store is broadcasting the locations of items in three dimensions to the user's CPDA. Law-abiding broadcasts can be set to have automatic access to a CPDA; security works like any other firewall. After shopping, the user queues up their car's location, marks down the restaurant as the next waypoint, and is on their way.
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Long-winded, I know, and full of acronyms. FoA. I hope I got across some of the ideas I can see happening with a proper augmented reality implementation. My interest in seeing these come to fruition stems thusly:
1. Technology is ripe; although a bit bulky, every aspect of this scenario could be realized with current technology. That means that, provided with the right resources, this could be a product to come out of the IST program at PSU.
2. The economic situation wants for it; the iPhone's success as a life tool shows how eager the middle class populace could adopt a more useful reality.
3. The sociological condition could permit it; the connectivity of the web proves it. Several proven social technologies that foreshadow the AR's implementation:
a. Tagging. Flickr, blogs, everywhere you see tagging, you see a social computer digesting large amounts of information and reducing it to user--that is, human--relative terms. What greater piece of information could there be to digest than the entire expanse of the earth itself?
b. Google Earth. Landmark maps, Google has shown, may be compiled simply through user input. With a world map that isn't constant, though, the users must create the map as well. A corporation cannot do the job itself.
c. Wikipedia. The obvious one, the ultimate proof that human collaboration can categorize with great efficiency given a convenient way to do so.
I know, lists, right? Sorry, but they help get things across. I find it curious that the reasons I see AR happening coincide with the trends that Metaverse Roadmap has been studying.
Social Computing. Augmented Reality. Social Networking. It's not the internet, it's not a virtual world, it may not even constitute the real world anymore. But I'd love to see them all coincide, to live with the efficiency my imaginary user does. Man, I'm going to feel dumb if someone's talked about this somewhere else. In all probability, they have. Fortunately that just makes it more likely that eventually we'll see something like this happen.
I'd love to be one of those who help it along.