Thanks AR group for your hard work on th…


Thanks AR group for your hard work on this, it was a fun and instructive experience to go through your ‘Just another UBC blog site’ for this assignment.

I will focus on Question 1) & 4).

AR definitely has potential.  Specifically, I think once the bugs are worked out, it could provide great potential as a teaching tool for “Increased Comprehension of Abstract Concepts”, say for subjects such as Linear Algebra, which has many abstract concepts that my teachers who were only equipped with chalk and blackboard, had difficulty explaining well.

However, I think it might still be some time until AR can figure out its own kinks and challenges, to prove it a universally useful technology.

Until then, let me outline what I think are AR’s Key functional Advantages over other technologies, and 2 of its major obstacles moving ahead:

Advantages:

In a perfect world, it seems AR can:

1) As an Engagement Layer: Supplant, or more likely compliment traditional text-based learning, by providing supporting (interactive) images, which will likely enhance learning for most none read-write dominant learners. Ex. Aura.

2) An an Information Layer:  Provide many of us additional layers of information related to the things, people, or places we are interested in. Ex. Tagging.

Obstacles:

1)      Privacy concerns:  looking through my friend’s Google Now application on Android, this program studies users’ past behavior (including, flights, movies, appointments, places, transit, weather, dictionary definitions, and other searches) to provide them intelligent information in the form of ‘cards’ – this could be expanded to interactive images in years to come.

If wondering if he should use it, we were both triggered by how much of our privacy we would be compromising by using such an app?
Recognizing this concern at the workplace for instance, the Supreme court of Canada just extended constitutional rights to protect workers privacy rights, ruling employers DO NOT have rights to the contents of their employees search and hard-drive; (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/supreme-court-rules-on-whether-material-on-work-computers-is-private/article4623205/).

If that is the case, why would I want Google or another private company, with whom I have even less of a protected relationship than my work, enabled to see and do with my personal/medical/financial/calendar/search related information as it pleases?  The potential for abuse is nothing short of stupendous and must be taken very seriously.

2)      Can relying on AR hamper cognitive development?  There is growing evidence to support the hypothesis that relying on GPS for navigation can hamper memory and spatial cognition development in the human brain (http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/19/can-gps-help-your-brain-get-lost/).

In a similar way, if we start using AR and other technologies, not to advance our learning per se, but to make our lives easier, we risk using technology to the detriment of our mental faculties.   

I realize these questions are bigger than AR technologies alone, but nonetheless, they are questions promoters and developers should be aware of and seek to address.

In the meantime, I will say this: I think AR has the most magical potential of the tools we’ve seen so far.

“Magic is a theatre, and every trick is a story”

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