Tales From an Augmented Reality Pioneer (Part 1)

By Jodi Schiller

I take my AR products everywhere I go these days.

Very quickly, questions start flying: Where did this technology come from? How does it work? How will it be used in the future? Once I explain the nuts and bolts of it all, members of my captive audience reveal how concerned they are about the ethical, social, and cultural implications of a future world that integrates different versions of reality. After all, we already need new combinations of words to qualify or accurately describe “reality,” a concept that historically needs no further explanation. Today, four distinct types of “reality” exist (or coexist): Reality, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality. Since many of us are wrestling with the mere words, no wonder it’s dizzying to guess what they mean for our future. It’s hard (at times, even impossible) to grasp that everything we know, believe, and trust about the world around us – for example, assuming the ground below is firm, the sky above is blue – might look, feel, and behave unexpectedly, at any minute?

I’ve been spending a lot of time pondering the answers to some of the complex questions this new reality inspires. Most often, I don’t know the answers, and frankly, I’m not certain anyone does. However, here is my attempt to provide answers to the AR/VR questions I hear the most (once I’ve proven my sanity, of course).

I think of Augmented and Virtual Reality as just a high-tech way to make first-person shooter games frighteningly lifelike. I don’t play or build games, so why should I care about AR/VR?

You’re right: For now, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality primarily are taught in association with game development. And while both help bring interactive games vividly to life, neither is strictly (or solely) a game development technology. Both AR and VR have numerous applications across many fields and industries, including education and healthcare. It won’t be long before schools offer degrees in Augmented and Virtual Reality for many related and newly created careers: Haptic (touch) and scent development and design, gestural linguistics, hardware and software engineering, VR/AR therapies, ARchitecture and the ARts. Scholars and researchers in the humanities and sciences will observe the impact of this technology on society, the environment, the human psyche. As the applications for these products and technologies become more obvious and mainstream, we’ll count game development as just one of many subsets of AR/VR tech.

I know AR/VR integrates fantasy and reality, but most of our mainstream fantasy-based games revolve around violence and gore. I don’t want that to be part of my reality. How can I continue to live a peaceful life?

The downside to integrating imagination – our own, other people’s, and the gaming industry’s — into our personal reality is that we may not like what we see. You may prefer to experience a unicorn gently guiding you across a busy intersection, while your best friend wants to fight an epic battle against evil aliens on his way to work. It can be terrifying to consider losing control over our own experience of reality, but I’ve thought of two solutions to help mitigate the potential negatives of this potential conundrum.

1. The IEEE. This is the world’s largest professional association for the advancement of technology. It acts as an overseer to emerging and existing technology by recommending best uses and practices and creating global standards. With a growing community of more than 160 countries, the IEEE has launched the Digital Services Initiative to create international standards and protocols and establish ethical guidelines and safeguards for myriad emerging technologies – including Augmented and Virtual Reality.

Already the IEEE is working on developing standards to prevent the abuse of these tools. To get a sense of how the organization seeks to protect humanity from the potential pitfalls of technology, here’s how it is addressing issues surrounding personal drones: For the sake of protecting individual privacy when on private property, the IEEE is exploring how to enable automatic video blackouts when a drone crosses a border on a map. Better update your land ownership records!

2. Women and minorities. Yep, you read that right. We’re all keenly aware of the gender imbalance in STEM fields, and it applies just as much – if not more so – to the AR and VR industries. Although I’ve heard lofty pronouncements from corporate and governmental leaders about improving diversity, I don’t see much real urgency (or effective action) to end gender imbalance. Research repeatedly shows that homogenous groups of developers and thinkers leads to countless missed opportunities in terms of creativity and achievement. Real advances in AR/VR can benefit people world-over in countless ways — but this technology is only as powerful and positive as our imaginations. To keep this life-altering, and life-enhancing, industry moving forward and enabling us to stretch the boundaries of its potential, we need diversity in our businesses, labs, and think tanks. We need to invest in female VR/AR entrepreneurs. By building and nurturing a large, varied global brain trust we can access and amplify creative, values-based, out-of-the-box thinking to drive the industry forward. In my experience, women in AR/VR aren’t particularly interested in creating yet another incredibly realistic first-person shooter game. What will they imagine and build instead? I can’t wait to find out.

So far, I’ve answered just the “tip of the iceberg” questions. If you want to find out what I tell people who think AR/VR sounds “weird, dangerous, and unnatural, read on “Everything You Imagine Is Real” (Part Two)