Layar-ing It On

The future is here.

Not long ago, people would look at you like you had two heads if you mentioned getting information about a person, place or thing while walking down the street and simply looking at or snapping a picture of it. Then, Google announced the Google Glass project.

Google Glass changed how we thought about the accessibility of information.  We already had the Internet, but access was still relegated to our home computers and smartphones were only just hitting the market. When it was first announced, there were mixed reviews.

While this was happening, a new graphic was beginning to appear on posters and websites, and other similar publications. It was called a QR code, and it allowed people to use their new smartphones to get additional information, or be redirected to a website dealing with whatever the QR code was attached to.

Photo courtesy Lynn Barry, Pranav Mistry, MIT Media Lab

Fast forward to today, where the Layar company has produced an app that takes the QR code concept one step further with embedded codes in ads that feature links to more information about what you’re looking at, or locations to purchase an item, or another similar function. The practice of this is called augmented reality, and it’s not likely long before it becomes commonplace.

I can see Google making an offer to Layar for the technology, and implementing it into the Glass project. Then I see a whole bunch of people walking around getting tons of updates on the things they are looking at. It’s not such a bad thing, when you think about it. Plus, it almost certainly avoids something like this: