Augmented Reality: Unboxing Tech's Next Big Thing

by Mark Pesce

Slated as ‘the next big thing in tech’, augmented reality promises to take the screen out of our hands and wrap it around the world via ‘smart spectacles’. As a pervasive, invisible interface between the world and our senses, AR offers unparalleled capacity to reveal hidden digital depths, but it also comes at a cost to our privacy, our property, and our reality. 

In this crucial and provocative book, Mark Pesce draws on over thirty years’ experience to offer the first mainstream exploration of augmented reality. He discusses the exciting and beneficial features of AR as well as the issues and risks raised by this still-emerging technology – a technology that moulds us by shaping what we see and hear. 

Augmented Reality  is essential reading for anyone interested in the growing influence of this impressive but deeply concerning technology. As the book reveals, reality - once augmented - will never be the same.

160 pages, Hardcover

Published December 14, 2020

Reviews

[Sarah Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Augmented Reality by Mark Pesce is not something I would normally read but I do like to have varied reading and subject matter, so thought I would enjoy reading this. Augmented reality can be defined as ‘a technology that superimposes a computer-generated image on a user's view of the real world, thus providing a composite view’. AR is held up to be the next big development in technology, as it promises to ‘take the screen out of our hands and wrap it around the world via 'smart spectacles'. Seems almost like something out of a science fiction film but the technology is being developed.

Pesce writes well and although I found some parts a little difficult to understand I found it a very interesting read overall. I found the history Pesce provides about the development of AR very fascinating. Pesce puts forward the arguments for and against AR and draws his conclusions. I found some parts very disturbing, such as the amount of date that some social media platforms collect from their users. Additionally, Mark Zuckerberg Facebook’s Ceo has stated that in time we will all be wearing glasses that will be linked to our smartphones, these devices will have the ability to transfer data seen by the wearer into a centralised cloud database. Unbelievable? Maybe not. Pesce gives the example of the company Niantic, who created the most detailed map ever made, and how did it do this? Through the users of its app Pokeman Go! So as amazing and interesting as this may seem, it will also come at a cost to our privacy, property and ultimately our reality.

[I Read, Therefore I Blog · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mark Pesce co-invented the technology for 3D on the internet and is a professional futurist. This slim but engrossing and deeply terrifying book charts the origins and development of augmented reality (AR) technology before looking at how AR devices could use the information they gather about the world and its users and how the same could be utilised by Facebook, Google etc and the ethical issues that could result to privacy and property.