Sunday, November 7, 2010

Diminished reality



This is controversial stuff which reminds me of the movie 'They Live'. Researchers have developed a software algorithm that can remove certain objects from a camera feed in real time, after you select those objects. They 'sell' it as the opposite of augmented reality, where we add more stuff to our existing reality. Now, you can make your reality simpler by simply removing objects from your perception.

Obviously this can get a little dangerous, and I can see this being the basis of a new Japanese gameshow, but another pitfall is that when people start using this, they could become so dependent on artificially simplifying their world that they lose all natural, mental abilities to do so. I think though that with an explosion of technologies blending the virtual and the physical, it will all work out organically as long as we stay aware.

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