Latitude

Last week at MIT’s Emerging Technologies conference (EmTech), we were privy to a panel on Augmented Reality featuring:

Steven Feiner, Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University

Alexander Ingelsboeck, CEO of Mobilizy (which is responsible for augmented reality app Wikitude)

Pattie Maes, Associate Professor of the Program in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT

Ville-Veikko Mattila, Research Manager at Nokia Research Center

Augmented Reality: Now Accepting User Submissions

At the end of August, Wikitude launched its mobile augmented reality browser, allowing interactors to submit (rather than simply access) content about their physical environments, which could then be viewed by others:

Austrian augmented reality startup Wikitude announced today that it has released the 3.0 version of its software for Android handsets, fully integrating its OpenID-enabled wiki markup of physical locations around the world with a more sophisticated mobile user experience and preparing for the launch of its iPhone version.

ReadWriteWeb, ”Wikitude Launches User-Generated Augmented Reality Browser for Android Users, iPhone Soon”

Does User-Generated Augmented Reality Have a Review System?

During the Q&A of the EmTech Augmented Reality panel, one individual inquired about what type, if any, of review system would be put in place to moderate the accuracy of user submissions. The nature of this problem isn’t specific to augmented reality applications (ex. Wikipedia)–and peer review systems have proven phenomenally successful in certain collaborative communities–but acting on instantly accessible, erroneous information pertaining to one’s immediate physical environment could potentially have more impactful repercussions than some strictly web-based Wikipedia gullibility.

The principle remains the same, though: as technology moves forward–as it takes novel forms and appears in unexpected places (i.e. as it pervades physical spaces)–people need to be (continually) scrupulous about which user-submitted content they count as credible.

A Precarious Scenario

That being said, panelist Steven Feiner presented a disconcerting, if interesting, possibility for the quickly advancing future of augmented reality:

Steven Feiner at EmTech (A Precarious Scenario for Augmented Reality) from latddotcom on Vimeo.

“It’d make it possible for two people who normally would carry on a conversation that no one would really be able to listen to because people were just passing by, left and right… with all those pieces assembled, you’d have a wonderful, really high-fidelity record of that conversation… all courtesy of that very precisely tracked information, being compiled together by someone who might be interested. That possibility is a very frightening one, and I’m not sure what we could actually do to make that not happen.”

Header image courtesy of victoriapackham’s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.