There is a new reality. It is no longer virtual, it is no longer real world, or simulated. The death of research comes in the form of augmented reality.
Augmented reality is actually a very interesting idea, and I have nothing against augmented reality in of itself. I do have an issue as to what it is being used for in the research department. It has been adopted into phone applications to allow a user to essentially point the camera that is built into their phone and pull up information about the building that they are pointing at. WOW, what an idea! This is the next step to easily accessing information. On the surface, it would seem that information this easily obtained would make it so that people would become smarter and much more versed in the world around them. This would allow them to go to the Museum of Natural History and pull up information about the building such as when it was built, what time it is opened until, etc. What a glorious manifestation of feeding information to those who normally would not even think about researching a building. We will soon have a utopia of "brain children" ready to possess any information they want, or will they? Here is my argument AGAINST augmented reality being used to research. What steps must one actually do to achieve a certain level of knowledge? When one pulls up the information, what is there to compare it to? These two questions I hope to answer.
First off, I want to start with the number of steps taken. One of the beautiful things about the Internet is that it has sped up research times immensely. This is truly a great thing. I can now find out what I want very quickly. For those of you who know me well, I love to research. I can literally spend hours researching one subject, and enjoy every second of doing so. There is an old saying though that says, "the chase is better than the catch." When I research, I find out more than just about what I am researching. Due to the fact that I am taking the time to research, and not just finding the answer to one question, I am able to find out so much more about things I would have never expected. When I research, for example, about computer forensics, I am also finding out information about encryption, how drive media works, etc. This allows me to have a greater knowledge about the entire subject, rather than just finding the answer. Let's say though, that this new technology continues to grow and at one point, I can point at a certain speaker, and know everything I want about that speaker. What have I really accomplished? I have obtained the knowledge, but nothing to back it up with. I have answered my questions, but have posed no new ones. This is rather disconcerting, because instead of learning how to learn, we are learning how to be fed.
One argument against this though, is that all this is doing is making information more readily accessed. Some could say that according to my logic, the Internet should be outlawed, and we should all go back to the Library if we really want to research. My argument to that is that we are still going to the library, but electronically. We must still research to find information, not having a spoon shoved in our mouth.
Secondly, when one does pull up this information, will the normal consumer of this information generally research it any further? One of the great things about the Internet is that there are so many opinions and thoughts, that one can make up their own mind about what one chooses to believe. If I just point my phone at something though, and it gives me data, what do I really have to compare it to? The two databases that I have seen so far for this new way of using augmented reality is wikipedia, which is user input, and a second database that, from what I understand, a company controls. So we have two options here, rely on someone that may or may not know what they are talking about to feed us information through wikipedia, or have a company control what we see and believe. I think you can see my point in this. We could eventually have a small group of people ruling what the masses are told to believe by controlling what they can see and believe. If you don't believe that this is possible, please read 1984 or Animal Farm. Both fictitious books, but both very eerily coming true.
So what is this a call for? This is a call to opening our eyes to the world around us. Let us not kill ourselves by not doing the research ourselves, but let us embrace the idea that we have the ability to find out what is Truth and embrace that Truth. Don't take my word for it though, research it yourself.
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