rich contextual overlays
Posted in sci-fi on March 26th, 2009This video from MIT Media Lab, that eternal source of optimism and experimentation, shows a cool new wearables demo dubbed the sixth sense. Anyone who’s read Vernor Vinge recognizes this notion of overlaying contextual information onto the actual visual targets one encounters in daily life. Watch the video - really, it starts out slow but gets better.
In Vinge’s book “Rainbow’s End” people this capability is commonly embedded in contact lenses. I see something identifiable, and a processing system will fetch relevant data from the Internet to offer me more detail. If I’m lookijng at a landmark, for example, the system should fetch historical, architectural, and current visitor info about said landmark, and layer it onto my display in a semi-opaque manner.
Here they’ve taken a pragmatic approach to advancing toward this goal. They are projecting the detail onto nearby surfaces, which is much easier and cheaper. In sci-fi there are always going to be situations where mission-critical information will be retrieved, just in time, and displayed only to the hero or villian. But in more mundane day-to-day situations like shopping, this system wouls seem to be a great stride forward. Bravo MIT Media Lab!
