In my discussion post on the Go 2 Web site I talked about Augmented Reality. One of the apps I checked out was called Layar. It allows people to create datasets of information and geotag them. Well here is an example of this for this morning.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/11/video-the-unsettling-truth-about-our-augmented-reality-future/#continued
In that video (it's in dutch) a Layar layer was created that showed where star's houses are in Amsterdam. The man in the video is walking around Amsterdam with his phone and it is showing him where people's houses are. At 2:47 of the video he actually sees Brad Pitt in his house! Heh. Note it doesn't actually track the people, just the houses. It is not such a stretch though that if enough people use that application, people can be updating it based on siting of stars. "Hey Brad Pitt just walked into the store I am in!". Update the layar site and everyone nearby will be notified. Instant flash mob.
Is this a good thing? Well like every new technology, it will have both good and bad uses. Standards of usage will have to be developed.
The director at the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) in CA tried to set up a "bad doggie" driver reporting system much like this...wherever you were you would punch in the license plate and report the bad driving...it started to collect quite a great data set...
ReplyDeleteHe was told to shut it down and he did.
A group of friends and I set up a tagging system like this in 1999-2000...called tagarama.com where people would "tag" other people using GIS...and communicate via one way communication. Homeland security shut us down just after 9/11.
There are forces that work for things happening and there are the forces that work against things happening...and those forces seem to be completely unpredictable!
I have noticed a tendency to block or shutdown technologies that people don't understand. I guess it takes a bit of effort to comprehend and many people don't want to bother. It doesn't matter. "The avalanche has already started, it's too late for the pebbles to vote." - Kosh
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