Notes on Vox Summit on Augmented Reality

Last week, I attended a really cool event at the intersection of design and augmented reality (AR): the VOX Summit. We had some great speakers (including one of my favorite authors, Daniel Suarez), and we broke up into smaller groups to prototype how AR can be used effectively in fields like robotics, education, and storytelling. 

I learned a lot about the state of the art in the field and got to play with some AR apps (and learned how to drop my own AR objects into the "world"). I really enjoyed Daniel Suarez's and Blaise Aguera y Arcas's talks, and their messages about the pros and cons of the world we're in the process of creating resonated with me.

Below are some of my notes and takeaways.

a. design thinking

ii. AR as new medium
2. “We should build good ships here; at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always good ships.”
3. always good experiences

i. augmentedreality.org

IV. Daniel Suarez
a. Shamanism/Daemon
b. Present-adjacent (not too far)
c. He’s optimistic about future
d. Remote-controlled drones almost obsolete because can jam communication
e. Pushes decision-making to drone itself
f. False consensus in social media; scripts creating fake trends
g. Perception is reality
h. Network needs to be more reliable for DarkNet
i. Things need to default to being encrypted to freely exchange ideas
j. People voting several times a day for local issues
k. Afraid of weapons systems that have credit card and can direct itself (Razorback)
l. New social system as a lifeboat in case old system dies
m. Hole-in: self-contained system but which is informed by other parts and can evolve
n. IP becomes something more fluid; the plan is original idea you own and others can build on top and you get some percent over time as it evolves
o. AR beginning of something very big

b. AR and entertainment
c. Augmented Hollywood
d. Hollywood as how ppl should tell stories
e. AR needs to fulfill a fantasy/wish
f. Tie in to wish fulfillment of the film
h. Remove barriers
i. Augmented movies
i. Terminator
ii. Minority report
iii. Iron man
j. Augmented theater
i. Conspiracy for Good
ii. Storylines
iii. Augmented reality cinema app
k. The Witness: the first movie in the outernet
l. Augmented marketing
m. Citadel movie
i. View clips via posters
n. Iron Man face AR experience/game
i. Wish fulfillment of becoming hero
ii. Social element of sharing your pic w/ friends
o. Augmented books
i. Ice Age book trigger cards
ii. Wonderbook book of spells
1. Magic mirror effect on TV
iii. Art of Journey book to visualize art in 3D

a. Blaise Aguera y Arcas
ii. Online services, Microsoft
iii. Training in physics and applied math
1. Never studied CS or design
iv. Seadragon
1. Founded company
2. Multiresolution images
v. Photosynth
2. Acquired by MSFT in 2007
3. Started as grad student project at UW
vi. Bing mobile
vii. Next
viii. Interaction design
1. Art deco
2. Helvetica
ix. Design of systems based on math

x. Portfolio

1. Gasbar
a. Progress bar
b. Not 1 degree of freedom (% done) but 3 (% done, uncertainty, how much activity going on now)
c. Using particles representing activity
d. Modeling fluid gas transition

2. Streetside
a. Navigation in street view
b. Rotation is easy (photos on cube/skybox)
c. But translation is hard because model environment
d. Sense of parallax weak; just need actual good imagery, not complex space
e. Simplified the geometry the image is projected on
f. Potemkin village geometry
i. Handful of polygons for entire scene

3. On{x}
a. Israeli project
b. Ifttt for mobile
c. Recipes
d. JS APIs
e. People hated that it required facebook login
f. Very closely connected to Node.JS
i. 1 language for front and back
ii. everything is reactive
iii. callbacks on events
iv. nothing ever blocks, all async
g. android
i. ease of creating app and using internal signals makes it easy for anyone to violate privacy in app
ii. phone is not a phone; it’s a computer

4. Incoming call
a. Daemon.js
b. Looking up unknown numbers on web on incming calls
5. Thinking about design mathematically
6. Interactions define behavior of app and shape of our relationship w/ real world
7. Lineage of phones inheriting from PCs not phones
a. Still desktop w/ icons
b. How far can AR go if stands in silos of apps that require its own app to be downloaded
i. Pull vs. push
ii. How to push AR info to ppl w/o app
c. Single AR key broker vs. open vs. secure
i. Need cheaper signals to do more expensive operations like vision recognition
d. CV is advancing fast, but app model is broken
e. Wii -> Kinect transition to naturalness
f. Problem of the vanishing physical
i. Kindle books getting removed from your shelf on copyright violations
ii. Book metaphor vs. online service metaphor
iii. What of what we produce is real vs not
iv. 15th century books still look great
v. is our current product ephemeral?
vi. Embodied objects vs. not

VII. Helen Papagiannis talk @arstories
a. Augmented reality as a new medium for storytelling
b. Always build a good ship
c. Moonshot
d. Reveal
e. Delight
f. Engage
g. Make
h. Reimagine
i. Use tools to change the rules
j. New planet
k. Dreamer
l. Emotional journey
m. Iterative
n. Retention
o. Engrossing
p. Curiosity
q. Wonderment
s. Make mistakes faster
t. @MarsCuriosity: Roads? Where I’m going, I don’t need roads.
u. The Future Belongs to the Curious video
v. Ask questions

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