Chris Dannen writes in Fast Company that Augmented Reality is overblown, and doesn’t expect apps like Layar to drastically change the way we live our everyday lives.
“Talk to the people doing AR research, and they seem to think that the awkwardness of using AR — holding your phone up in front of you; holding your Esquire in front of your computer — will work itself out. But they may be underestimating the power of human habit. We have been ingesting information the old fashioned way for hundreds of years: by looking at a static image and using our brains, not our smartphone cameras, to meld it with reality. Maps, newspapers, books, computers — they’re very different “technologies,” but they all work essentially the same way: our brains provide the milieu. AR wants to derail that relationship. That’s going to be a tough sell.”