Saturday, June 4, 2011

ROI


We're trying to figure out what to do with augmented reality, how to build it "right".

The business guys realize how much desire we can build with it. They see dollar signs. I mean I could surround you in a whole arrangement of things you'd want to pay money for. Women, merchandise, pokemon. These are the applications that companies are trying to build and perfect. Desire builders.

Throughout history a few noteworthy individuals have stood up and made some pretty compelling arguments against desire, attachment and past/future wanting. Hindus, Buddhists, even christ himself would have called our digital distractions, simply that. Demonic.

So I have to wonder if there's an augmented reality that doesn't try to augment anything. Can we use this technology to help the user BE HERE NOW, or will we only sell suffering through distraction?

Perhaps if we can tell the user more about their world, more about their surroundings. If we can help them play music, share art, contact loved ones. If we can keep the games we build simply games, and steer away from... steering away, then some day people will look back at augmented reality as a spiritual art form and not a pornographic representation of humanity's mislead dis-satisfaction with the here and now.

-Cos

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Reporting Live






From the front lines of the change we all saw coming, but never felt. They're going to try to blind you, to steer you to buy more, watch more, crave more and sell more of yourself than nature ever asked. It's called entertainment, engagement, virality.


It's really just a distraction. Today I went to their mecca, the headquarters of digital illusion and derangement and witnessed a generation of far-removed air traffic controllers attempt to party. Sad, awkward, insincere. We pretend to have something to party for. Go win a war. Go survive a tsunami. You clap for the iPad 2 and thank them for distracting you with dollars.



Things are going to get a lot worse. I've been working on the edge of it and I should tell you that the tools I feared, exist. The methods I imagined are now retweeted keynotes. The ability to drive masses of individuals to act in controlled, predictable, profitable patterns is being tweaked and perfected every hour, every day, with every fervently ignored breath they allow.


So what can we do? Steel up. Go through the chemical motions of sincere vitality as often as you can. Ignore your own facebook. Look at those who exist around you, try your best to accept that they are real and just as valuable as you could ever be. We pretend to connect with more people using their feed pipes. Connection is energetically, chemically and fundamentally impossible without being in the same "place." Not pysical, not necesarily. Place is solely the product of intention, attention and sincerity. They steal this from us. They take it out of our hands and smear it over their needless products in attempts to solidify their own advantage over the populace. Forgive them.


Fight back. Their illusions and trinkets might satiate in that instant, that 99 cent impulse.

But it won't fill you up.

Only you can.

It takes a lot of humility, complete acceptance and an infinite amount of appreciation.


Dance.

The computers will never get it.


Lucky them.


-Cos