Augmented reality is intercepting information between it’s source and
the user, for example adding 3D objects to a user’s vision. This can be
used for displays, for example showing the calorie content of any food that
the user is looking at. The US Postal Service can embed their package sizes
into a user’s webcam image, to see whether an object will fit into it.

Current technologies, such as mobile phones, are ‘invasive’, in that they
must be used explicitly. With augmented reality, the things you are looking
at are modified implicitly, and thus it becomes seemless and always in the
periphery. Senses other than visual can also be used, as well as
potentially creating new senses.

There are several such systems around today in research, although not as
involved as optic nerve hacking, so before such things become widely
used, the ways in which they can be used must be addressed. How much
information should be shown, and how can irrelevant things be done away with,
whilst ‘zooming in’ on the useful things? Could eye-tracking be used to
see what is the centre of attention?

Advertisers and the military are obvious users of this technology, but
it would also take the idea of 2D barcodes to everything.

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