AR Addiction: Could AR get too immersive?

Immersed in the Digital World By Brian Wassom

Augmented Reality technology is all about customizing the world around us.  Through video-enabled smartphone and tablet apps, and soon directly through eyewear, it overlays digital data over our perception of the physical world.  The virtual world gets layered directly on top of the real one.

A key buzzword within the AR industry is “immersive.”  Immersiveness is a measure of how seamless the integration is between virtual and physical data.  The more immersive a user’s experience (or “UX”) is, the less the user consciously perceives the augmented content as being separate from, or inferior in quality or value to, what he sees with his naked eye.

For designers of almost any AR app, the more immersive an app is, the better.  In a fully immersive environment, a user perceives the virtual data as being equivalent to, and indistinguishable from, his physical surroundings–in other words, just another part of the landscape.  The concept video “Domestic Robocop”  gives one vision of what this reality might look like:

Just Around the Corner

Of course, no AR company is currently in a position to achieve complete immersion.  Hardware limitations make that impossible.  As engrossing and useful as the display on a monitor, smartphone, or tablet screen is, it only augments one small rectangle in your field of view, and only as long as you hold the device up in front of you.  Looking away from the screen doesn’t take much effort.  Even the best AR app is no more immersive than a really good movie would be.

But what about in the not-too-distant future, when AR-capable eyewear is commonplace, and AR content is plentiful?  At that point, it will be possible for a user to become totally “immersed” in a digitally enhanced view of the world.  Personally, I’d love to have that option.   That’s when AR as a medium will finally realize its potential.  Walking directions that I can actually walk on, virtual FAQ buttons on physical buildings, and floating boxes reminding me of people’s names are experiences that I can’t wait to have.

Our Addiction-Prone Society

If recent experience with consumer technologies has taught as anything as a society, however, it’s that the more engrossing a technology is, the more likely it is that a certain segment of the population is going to develop an unhealthy fixation with it.  Whether you call it “addiction” (a diagnostic term that gets thrown around far too often, but sure makes for catchy headlines) or simply a bad habit, the fact is that people love to immerse themselves in fantasy worlds to escape the doldrums and difficulties of real life.  And fully immersive AR will be orders of magnitude more engaging and attractive than even the best of today’s digital content.

We see this type of behavior everywhere today.  Gamers will sit in front of their consoles playing massively multiplayer online games for hours and days on end, to the point that just last week someone died from a blot clot after sitting too long playing Halo 3 on Xbox.  I’ve personally seen people dedicate the majority of their non-working hours to online role-playing games like Everquest and World of Warcraft, a phenomenon that has ruined plenty of lives.   And there were portions of my college years where the same fate could have befallen me while playing the computer strategy game Civilization–although the internet connectivity of newer games adds a social element that draws players in even further.  Not that any of these games are bad in and of themselves.  Rather, they’re so good–so immersive–that players with poor self-discipline can easily get sucked into playing them longer than they should.

Of course, the same technology that makes these games possible also makes it orders of magnitude easier to access other habit-forming content, such as porn and gambling.

The AR medium will make all of these experiences more immersive and compelling.  For example, a recent article contained an ad for “the Peregrine,” a wearable glove that replaces the video game controller and proclaims itself to be an “interface like no other.”  Accessories like that, and the explosive growth of proto-AR gaming systems like the Wii, Kinect, and Nintendo 3DS, demonstrate that AR is the future of digital gaming.  And that is because of the unprecedented degree to which these systems allow players to physically immerse themselves in the game world.  Likewise, AR (and Kinect) porn and gambling applications are already on their way.

Augmentation or Self-Aggrandizement?

What got me thinking on this topic was an offhand comment by Brendan Scully of Metaio during his presentation at the ARE2011 Conference.   Toward the end of a very thoughtful panel discussion on the challenges of designing AR user experiences, Brendan said, “I certainly wouldn’t trust myself to design my own UX.”

This reminded me of some of the cautionary tales that pop culture has already given us about the drawbacks of having complete control over our surroundings.   Star Trek: The Next Generation did this frequently (sometimes to a fault) via the “Holodeck,” a holographic room capable of replicating any environment and character imaginable.

In the episode “Hollow Pursuits” (and later episodes), the socially inept character Reginald Barclay literally becomes addicted to living in the artificial worlds he creates there–complete with racier versions of his real-life female acquaintances and diminutive parodies of the men that intimidate him.

Then there’s the classic virtual reality tale “Lawnmower Man,” in which the title character conquers an artificial world and declares, “I am God here!”

The special effects in these shows may be dated, but their message is timeless: the more control we gain over their personal environments and surroundings, the more those surroundings will tend to reflect our own narcissism.

It seems inevitable that at least some AR users will demonstrate the same tendencies, to varying degrees.  For most people, AR will probably be a lot like text messaging or Facebook are today–a technological convenience that many people may actually spend too much time with and joke about being “addicted” to, but that leads to few actual cases of bona fide dependence.

But even if it doesn’t amount to “addiction,” the potential for unhealthy behavior through AR will always be present to some degree.  Even today, for example, a jilted lover could use an AR app to display an ex-boyfriend’s or ex-girlfriend’s face at the physical location of every past date–reinforcing a vicious cycle of negative emotions.  Pornographic content–already ubiquitous and responsible for an array of unhealthy behavior–can be displayed anywhere in ways that standard, two-dimensional monitors won’t be able to match.

As AR hardware and capabilities mature beyond today’s comparatively simplistic communication technologies into a more immersive environment, the potential for abuse will grow accordingly.   To those who become accustomed to living in a “Domestic Robocop”-type world, non-augmented reality may start to seem unbearably mundane by comparison.  At that point, we could very well see a number of real-world “Reginald Barclays.”

Will government or industry step in to regulate AR content and head off some of these consequences?  Perhaps.  Although governments have more or less lost the ability to regulate violent content, age restrictions on prurient material remain enforceable, and would certainly be applied in this new medium.  Crackdowns on illegal gambling programs may well follow.  And just as we see counselors specializing in addictions to such content today, we’re likely to see similar services available for those who lose themselves in their own augmented worlds.

Reasons for Optimism

Just because AR will be immersive doesn’t automatically make it addictive or dangerous.    No matter how convincing its digital content is, AR is, by definition, the intersection between that data and the real, physical world.  The most exciting possibilities for immersing oneself in AR are also the same features that would take users outdoors.  Therefore, augmented content may never have the same tendency to isolate users into online communities and separate them from physical interaction the way that console-based gaming systems with monitor-dependent displays do today.  Proto-AR systems like the Wii and Kinect are already heralded as getting gamers off the couch; AR could be the killer app for getting them outside and into the world around them.

Counselors, meanwhile, need not wait for AR-addled patients to start taking the technology seriously.  Today’s innovators are already devising ways that AR can be used to counsel patients.  Helen Papagiannis, for example, has designed the world’s first AR Pop-Up book for the iPad 2.  It’s designed to let users interact with virtual representations of their phobias–spiders, for example–in a visually convincing, but perfectly safe, way.

In sum, then, AR as a technology will be interesting and powerful medium, with the ability to do both good and harm to individual psyches and society as a whole.  It will offer ability to psychologically immerse users in artificial content to a degree unmatched by other technologies.  But that ability itself is ethically neutral.  How it impacts us–and how much it becomes incumbent on others to regulate our use of it–will depend on what we choose to do with it.

Augmented Reality Eyewear and The Problem of Porn:

Regardless of your moral outlook, porn is a serious and growing sociological ill.  It may not be the same type of problem as crystal meth, child predators, or terrorism.  But it is a problem–and one that will get an order of magnitude worse when AR eyewear hits the market.How Internet Porn Affects Society Today:
The infographic to the right tells the tale.  Twelve percent of all websites, 25% of all search engine requests, and 35% of all downloads are sexually explicit.  Over 40 million viewers in the US alone, where the industry rakes in over $2.64 billion per year.

Infographic on Internet Porn:

One of the most telling numbers on this chart, however, is “11.”  That’s the average age at which a boy first encounters explicit material online.  The Daily Mail recently featured an interview with a mother who told how her 11-year-old son’s “entire character” changed after he began watching porn on his laptop in his own bedroom.  She wrote: If Charlie had been on Class A drugs he couldn’t have been more transformed. He became withdrawn, moody and sullen. He wasn’t sleeping at night. He lost his normal gargantuan appetite. He looked hollow-eyed and listless. He had none of the boyish energy and high spirits that we were all used to.  He began writing things like ‘I hate myself’, or ‘Charlie is s***’ on scraps of paper, newspapers, books, even his bedroom furniture and walls. He drew obscene cartoons with speech bubbles filled with the filthiest words in the dictionary.  I once rolled back his sleeve to find ‘I am disgusting’ scrawled on the inside of his arm. I managed to stop myself from crying until I’d left the room. But the moment the door closed behind me I broke down completely.

After intensive intervention, Charlie recovered.  But millions of other 11-year-olds encounter similar pitfalls.  In the article “Why Shouldn’t Johnny Watch Porn if He Likes?,” Psychology Today explained that “sexual-cue exposure matters more during adolescence than at any other time in life.”  That’s because the age of 11 or 12 is “when billions of new neural connections (synapses) create endless possibilities. … By his twenties, he may not exactly be stuck with the sexual proclivities he falls into during adolescence, but they can be like deep ruts in his brain—not easy to ignore or reconfigure.”  In other words, constant, easy access to porn-on-demand conditions young men to stimuli that real-life interactions can never match, setting them up for frustration and failed relationships later in life.
And indeed, the deleterious impact of internet porn on healthy adult relationships has been well-documented.  As early a 2003, the New Yorker ran a piece on mainstream, well-educated, professional men who found themselves increasingly hooked on explicit internet imagery.  This and other articles found the men correspondingly unable to relate to, or maintain a healthy relationship with, the actual women in their lives.  At the same time, women find it increasingly difficult to find a man whose mind isn’t dominated by such content.

A word to the naysayers.  Granted, not everyone who looks at porn online is going to go off the deep end.  And yes, there are those who argue that it can benefit couples who watch it together.  The data, though, speaks for itself.  Much like alcohol and other vices, there are a lot of people out there who just can’t resist the temptation.
That’s the society into which AR eyewear will soon be introduced.
The beauty of AR is that it liberates content from two-dimensional monitors and sets it free into the physical world.  But will that also be AR’s curse?
Painting the World With Porn “It’s not news, of course,” the New Yorker wrote in 2003, “that men are into porn—or that the Internet has made it possible to delve into the dirty without slipping into the back room at a video store or hunkering down in a Times Square peep booth.”  But “thanks to the advent of cable modems and DSL connections,” it continued, “the mass consumption of cyberporn has slyly moved from the pathetic stereotypes (fugitive perverts, frustrated husbands) into the potent mainstream (young professionals, perhaps your boyfriend)….  Porn is not merely acceptable; it’s hip.”
Maybe that’s why, when Google[*] launched its Project Glass teaser video on YouTube, porn was a recurrent theme in the user comments.  For example:

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you can watch porn on the go!
* * *
Awesome, with this remarkable device it´s possible for me to watch porn while i watch porn on my computer. Life´s good!
* * *

download porno on a crowded bus!
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The sentiment is easy to understand.  Anonymity has always fueled porn consumption.  First, there were magazines in slick black bags.  Then pay cable stations.  Then the internet.  Now, AR eyewear will enable users to take the content with them outside the house, viewing it in public while still remaining anonymous.  One of the New Yorker‘s interview subjects wrote of the thrill of danger he got by viewing porn in his university’s computer lab, while others worked in adjacent cubicles.  AR-equipped thrill-seekers will be able to take this one step further, and watch explicit content while actually standing in front of and talking to those same colleagues.  At school, work, home, on the bus–no setting will ever again reinforce a social stigma against watching it, because only the wearer will see what’s on his AR lenses.
There’s another reason that viewers are likely to take their AR porn into the public square.  The ability to overlay explicit content on the real world–or, more to the point, on real people–will offer synergies that have been heretofore relegated only to private imaginings.
“I’m just going to say this right now,” blogger Jordan Yerman wrote on the same day the Project Glass video was released. “The dev teams for every online porn outfit on the web are watching the Google Project Glass video below and thinking, ‘we can create an app that matches sex footage from our libraries to the body positions of passersby spotted by augmented-reality glasses.’ I promise you, that’s what they’re thinking.”
Illustration by Owen Smith

That certainly appears to be what the guy depicted in this image is thinking.  The New Yorker carried this illustration with its 2003 article, and it’s probably intended to depict what’s going on in the guy’s mind–i.e., his inability to stop thinking about porn and see this woman for who she is. Today, though, it almost seems prescient, and could pass for a depiction of what he actually sees through AR eyewear that’s running a “layer” of data that automatically overlays explicit imagery on passersby.
Of course, having that layer of data open in one’s eyewear ensures that one will have such explicit thoughts about every person one sees–thereby reinforcing the negative thought patterns that lead to compulsive behavior.  That calls to mind the warning of 17th Century poet Thomas Traherne, who said, “As nothing is more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think well.”  Walking around in the wrong AR layers will make it even more difficult to think well.
It may also land the unwary in legal trouble.  What happens when someone using such a layer in their eyewear encounters (and therefore sees explicit material overlaid onto) a minor?  The device may (hopefully!) be programmed not to recognize those who are obviously children, but verifying the ages of teens would be beyond its ability.  And the truth is that a depressingly large number of men would use such devices for exactly that purpose.  As my friend and fellow AR enthusiast Joseph Rampolla, a law enforcement officer and consultant specializing in cybercrime, says, “wherever society finds pornography, child pornography is not too far behind.”
And what about the effect it will have on women?  They are increasingly forced to deal with men whose unrealistic expectations are fueled by images of models who never say no or have their own needs and standards.  One woman interviewed in the New Yorker article admitted, “I think it will be really rare, and hopefully it will happen, that I can meet a guy who will be happy with only me.”  Others find themselves compromising their own standards to meet men’s unrealistic ones.  And still others find themselves actually participating in the porn industry, sacrificing their own dignity to feed the insatiable demand of the industry’s consumers.

Not that we haven’t seen this coming for awhile.  More than a year ago, I posted an article on this blog facial regonition to what I called “body recognition“–the ability of AR eyewear to record the physical dimensions of passersby and put that footage to God-knows-what use.   I even speculated that ”the fashion world will respond by developing clothes that throw off recording devices, much like the checkered camouflage wraps that the auto companies use to shield prototype cars from the paparazzi.”  That conversation started just this week on CNN.

As the ravenous YouTube comments above demonstrate, we are going to encounter these issues as soon as AR eyewear hits the market.  There are those out there who are already working to make the explicit content available for these devices.  Others will line up on Day One to buy the eyewear specifically for that purpose.  But we all have to live in the society that will deal with the consequences.
Again, none of these issues are unique to AR.  But AR will bring an unparalleled degree of anonymity and unique abilities to overlay and create explicit content that will magnify the temptation, compulsion, and dysfunction with which our society is already riddled.

A *slight* waiting game by Apple Re: #RFID technology

The Wall Street Journal profiles Apple's "go-slow" approach to mobile payments. In June, Apple announced the inclusion of a feature called Passbook to iOS 6. Passbook allows users to keep loyalty cards, tickets and coupons in one central app. Passbook, however, does not offer a full payment system which has been a rumored area of research for Apple. 


The Wall Street Journal reveals that this is a very deliberate decision from Apple:

Holding back in mobile payments was a deliberate strategy, the result of deep discussion last year. Some Apple engineers argued for a more-aggressive approach that would integrate payments more directly. 

But Apple executives chose the go-slow approach for now. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the decision-making process. Apple's head of world-wide marketing, Phil Schiller, in an interview last month, said that digital-wallet mobile-payment services are "all fighting over their piece of the pie, and we aren't doing that."

According to the Wall Street Journal's sources, a small group within Apple was reported to have been investigating a new service that would embed payment methods into the iPhone or even build a new payment network. Discussions reportedly included Apple facilitating payments with merchants and even all the way to the possibility of Apple to begin acting as a bank. Apple also considered simpler wallet app possibilities or working with existing middlemen and taking a small cut of each transaction. 

Meanwhile, the Apple iPhone team had indeed explored NFC communications options in the next iPhone. Various concerns included impact on battery life, security, vendor adoption and customer satisfaction. 

Ultimately, Passbook is said to be the current compromise while Apple presumably waits to see how the mobile payment market matures.