Augmented Reality’s 3D Heart Syndrome
Companies that work with groundbreaking new technologies often struggle to find the most valuable uses for them. This is understandable: the foundations are still being laid, and we’re still in the process of understanding what can be built on top of them. We tend to replicate uses for older technologies until we learn enough to break out of that mindset. For example, whenever we have had a new medium gain popularity, we have staged productions that leveraged the strengths of preexisting ones. Early cinema was little more than filmed theater, but that was only after we moved beyond the novelty of the technology itself.
A “moving picture” was enough to keep audiences entertained for a little while — the movement alone astounded them. The modern iteration of this technological fascination is the 3 dimensional heart. Nearly every company that produces augmented reality content showcases a 3D heart, seemingly to the amazement of those to whom the heart is demoed. While the exercise of creating a 3D heart may be a fantastic learning tool for the designers or developers themselves, we have reached peak heart for users of AR.
In being mindfully skeptical, we know that technology for technology’s sake does not add value, but the potential uses for these features may have significant long term value. These new features will be crucial to new, larger creations once we understand what these larger creations could be. Returning to cinema: a still shot of a train pulling into a station added no value to a filmed theatrical performance. In our age of mixed reality, we have had our inventors. Our Edisons and Lumières. We haven’t yet had creators who define a new form, as D.W. Griffith did, or artists of that form who unlock even more potential, like Welles or Renoir. In cinema, that took decades, but in the age of exponential technology, thankfully, we will not have to wait so long.
The future of mixed reality is bright; it will help us create in ways we have not yet even considered. This is not to say that mixed reality does not yet have any useful applications — it has many already. Here are some examples developed by Pearson. There is, however, a risk when companies over-promise on what is feasible today. Some companies with a vested interest tend to set unrealistic expectations, especially when capitalizing on related newsworthy success. (See Pokemon Go.) However, technologies inevitably go through the hype cycle, and the higher the peak of inflated expectations, the deeper the trough of disillusionment. As mindful skeptic, managing this is relatively simple:
- Maintain realistic expectations
- Ensure products add value and are not “technology as showcase”
- Understand current limitations as well as long-term potential
- Leverage existing capabilities
- As always, learn from failure
