
Augmented Urban Reality - kawera
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/augmented-urban-reality?currentPage=all
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fennecfoxen
Disappointment.

The problem in New York (and heck, in San Francisco) is that there's very
little capacity and a lot of people to use it. One doesn't use an app or
sensor-enabled sign to find where to park in Manhattan: you pay for a monthly
space in a garage so that you're bleeding _slightly_ less money and so that
you have a consistent place to park, or you just use transit like everyone
else. One doesn't use free wifi from random kiosks: you buy a cell phone plan
so that you can have wireless anywhere (and you install the app to send you a
notice when your preferred subway line melts down). Dynamically adjusted
parking schemes will not be a welcome component of anyone's day to day life
and commute. The traffic-planning data is a marginal improvement over running
those little wires over the street to count cars, I suppose, and mmmaybe will
help for special events?

The hype is too much. You know what would deserve infrastructure hype? Use
traffic data to adjust a real network of _driverless cars_ or something that
substantially improves capacity. These nonsense kiosks will probably help out
some lost tourists, but the rest of New Yorkers will gleefully ignore them.
Bringing up real infrastructure achievements like _sewers_ just makes these
look puny.

We see the real motivation at the bottom of the article: targeting
advertisements with wifi sniffing. The rest is just part of a sell job.

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Dowwie
I think that we are now confronted with a decision similar to that which EU
made about freedom from tracking, but evolved.

The kiosks have video cameras in them. Information from kiosks across all 5
boroughs will be processed in real time, aggregated, and mined. This is a big
data dream for Alphabet, who will combine street-level activity with
information acquired from user's android phones. In exchange for providing
Alphabet with valuable insight, civilians get free high speed wifi and some
other goodies. Sidewalk Labs, who acquired the creator of the NYC kiosks and
operates them is an Alphabet company. I encourage everyone to read through
their privacy policy [1].

[http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doitt/downloads/pdf/Proposed-
PCS-...](http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doitt/downloads/pdf/Proposed-PCS-
Franchise-Exhibit-2-CityBridge-Privacy-Policy.pdf)

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okket
See also "Hyper-Reality"

[https://vimeo.com/166807261](https://vimeo.com/166807261)

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Animats
"Hyper-Reality" is very impressive. That's a good picture of what consumer-
grade augmented reality might well look like that. "Hyper-Reality" addresses
the real issues with augmented reality - as with touchscreens, output is good,
input sucks, and you have to design around that. They use mostly voice and
simple picking. Their overlays on reality don't have much fine detail, so they
can tolerate a little misalignment. It's ad-heavy, yet still usable. It tries
to be friendly, but is sort of obnoxious. That really is an augmented urban
reality, and from the point of view of a poor girl in Medellin, not the usual
bro types that appear in most VR/AR materials. They really nailed this.

(The parent article is more like clickbait. Sad, for the New Yorker.)

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jsemrau
I am so eternally grateful this concept is getting traction now! Having spend
a large portion of the last 4 years building up tenqyu, which solves location-
based augmented reality with easier parking, engaging urban sports games, and
global event aggregation.

Happiness!

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fennecfoxen
You claim your.... app/framework/company thing "solves location-based
augmented reality". This sounds like marketing-blurb. What do those words
placed in this order actually mean in practice and why is location-based
augmented reality even a thing which needs to be solved? How do "engaging
urban sports games" contribute to its solution?

How does it relate to this article - does any component besides the Singapore-
centric parking-garage app actually contribute meaningfully to urban
infrastructure?

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johnchristopher
How about asking nicely ?

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jsemrau
Thanks ;-)

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harshreality
What's the lineage and what are examples of this concept in (science) fiction?
There's Snow Crash and Rainbows End, but what else?

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doublerebel
Dennou Coil (anime tv series) is one of my favorites, and the kind of AR I
hope we actually see. Less overwhelming and commercial and more functional and
restrained.

Also I consider the "datumplane" from Hyperion novels to provide a lot of the
functionality of the modern AI-ssistent or AR tools we are currently
imagining.

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piercebot
> America’s brainiac class has generally regarded cities with fear and
> distaste.

> If the automobile caused us to disperse, the information age seems,
> paradoxically, to be drawing us back together.

Is the author suggesting that technology will encourage the intellectual elite
back towards cities? I'm a little confused as to how the introduction ties to
the rest of the article.

