Emergency call-outs to Lake District rescue teams have risen by 50% in five years, as a new generation of hill-walker ventures out with nothing more than their iPhone and a youthful disregard for their own mortality.
On the one hand this shows us that, when it comes to a cure for rank stupidity, there isn’t an app for that. On the other, it is a glimpse of the absolute reliance that a growing number of smartphone owners have on their mobile to device to navigate their digital, real and, increasingly, merged lives. As Google EMEA’s head of mobile, Ian Carrington, told last month’s IAB Mobile Engage, mobile has transformed from being a form of communication to being “life critical”.
It wasn’t always the case. Until recently, the digital and physical worlds occupied their own discrete space, certainly in the mindset of most consumers. The arrival of the QR code promised seamless transition from the physical to the digital world, with the capability to launch a mobile site, map, video or SMS, yet the reality of using QR codes is far from seamless. The process is clunky, the response is prompted and the experience is awkward. Sometimes excruciatingly so.
Take the QR code-enabled Tube poster for online dating service Be Naughty which, brilliantly, called on the would-be customer to reveal to fellow passengers that he couldn’t get a date or, presumably, any internet connectivity 40 metres below London.
Technologically and psychologically, the seeds of the QR code’s destruction are sown. A seismic behavioural shift in the way we use our mobile phones is coming. Google Goggles, though still in its infancy, heralds the change; in future, our reflex will be to point our mobile devices in order to access more information what we are looking at. We will have a digital expectation of the real world. We will expect to see layers.
Layers are out there already, in the shape of Aurasma, iButterfly and Layar. Layar is a vision-based augmented reality browser that lets us see a multitude of information, entertainment and commercial layers. Using Layar, a smartphone will visually identify a film poster and generate bonus footage in the digital space surrounding you. Brands early into the space include IBM, with its navigation layers for Wimbledon tennis, and Stella Artois, which allows you to tour a city by way of Stella-serving pubs. Though not vision-based yet, Foursquare, Facebook Check-Ins and Google Maps provide geo-location information layers that drive consumers’ digital expectation of the real world, and of the content and brand owners that will provide the information.
Expectation, in turn, will require a lens through which consumers can view the real and digital worlds simultaneously. Hand-held mobile devices, ergonomically and practically are not fit for future purpose. Augmented reality eyewear and headwear, such as Vuzix’s ‘The Wrap’ 920AR, are an early example of how the digital and physical worlds, and the interface between them, will be seamless.
