Applications for augmented reality are appearing everywhere: you can fight zombies, find the closest subway station, and measure a virtual flat-rate box on your kitchen counter before you head to the Post office. One of the slickest examples I’ve seen (not yet on the market) uses a robust facial recognition technology developed by Polar Rose to pull social information in real time just by looking at someone’s face. It’s called AugmentedID, and power networkers everywhere are drooling.

While many of us are caught up in the allure of augmented reality’s potential, few have played out the consequences of the rapid availability of this technology. Jamais Cascio decided to do just that in an article in this month’s The Atlantic, and conceived of a dystopian nightmare of real-life popups and social filtering (automatically removing people with differing political views from your field of vision, for instance).

We’re not that far off. He writes,

Although AR now relies on handheld devices, electronics makers like Sony are working on systems that you wear like sunglasses, making augmented vision more immersive. Here’s where the first familiar online phenomenon shows up: spam. Nearly every communication method we invent eventually conveys unwanted commercial messages. AR systems will be used for spam too, whether via graffiti-like tags, ads that pop up when you look too long at a shop, or even abstract symbols stuck to a wall or worn on a shirt that, when viewed through an AR system, turn into 3-D animations. (emphasis added — I would remove “nearly”)

Sounds cool — as long as there are only a few innovators doing it, and the executions actually add value. But it’s not hard to imagine this media opportunity spiraling rapidly out of control, as every logo ever printed becomes a point of “engagement” overnight.

The interpersonal implications are even more interesting. Cascio picks politics as an ideological differentiator to illustrate the drawbacks to instantly knowing everything about any individual you meet.

After California’s Prop 8 ban on gay marriage passed, opponents of the measure dug up public records of donors supporting the ban, and linked that data to an online map. Suddenly, you could find out which of your neighbors (or the businesses you frequent) were so opposed to gay marriage that they donated to the cause. Now imagine that instead of a map, those records were combined with an AR system able to identify faces.

You don’t want to see anybody who has donated to the Palin 2012 campaign? Gone, their faces covered up by black circles. You want to know who exactly gave money to the 2014 ban on SUVs? Easy—they now have green arrows pointing at their heads.

You want to block out any indication of viewpoints other than your own? Done.

This will not be a world conducive to political moderation, nor one where differing perspectives get along comfortably. It won’t take a majority of people using these filters to poison public discourse; imagine this summer’s town-hall screamers on constant alert, wherever they go. Yet this world will be the unintended consequence of otherwise desirable developments—spam filters, facial recognition, augmented reality—that many of us will find useful.

Now, I don’t necessarily buy that political partisanship will lead the augmented reality revolution. But here’s a far more likely scenario: augmented reality dating. Intelius recently rolled out an iPhone app called “datecheck” (video walthrough here) that performs an instant background check on anyone, reporting on details from criminal records to personal interests to estimated net worth. Imagine if this information was available in real time, based simply on facial recognition (e.g. someone you hadn’t met yet). The economist in me calls this access to near-perfect information “efficiency.” The realist in me calls this situation “everyone dies alone.” My favorite economist (and favorite professor), Steven Landsburg, would be torn.

Comedian Demetri Martin has a bit about bumper stickers that’s always resonated with me. He looks at the bright side of these eyesores:

A lot of people don’t like bumper stickers. I don’t mind them. To me they’re a short-cut to saying: “Hey, let’s never be friends.”

What happens when we’re followed around by virtual bumper stickers — not of our own choosing — at all times? Will we find new areas of commonality, or new reasons to discriminate? I worry about the latter scenario. Based only on your profile information, Facebook already thinks you’re fat; what will augmented reality present that’s any different? Some have argued that “what unites us is greater than what divides us.” But I bet you could find at least one ideologically incompatible perspective with every friend you have — after all, if your social network consists of ideological clones, what the hell do you all find to talk about?

I haven’t decided how I feel about this. I’m excited by the technology, but alarmed by the implications.

What do you think about augmented reality — good or evil?

New technology sometimes brings out my cantankerous side.

Back in my day, you used to have to buy whole albums if you liked a particular song that wasn’t released as a single.  Albums came on these plastic discs called CDs, and to play them on the go you had to have a device called a Walkman that was a whole 8 inches in diameter.  If you heard a song you liked and didn’t know the title or artist, you were never, ever going to find it again to listen to.

Back then, radio was low-def and loaded with commercials. You could pick your genre of music (maybe) by choosing one of a dozen stations on your dial, but then you were at the mercy of the DJ’s particular tastes.

When you got in your car and drove down to your local Blockbuster, you had to walk through a sea of DVD releases, loosely grouped by genre.  Maybe you had a friendly clerk who go to know your tastes over time and could recommend other movies he thought you’d like — but maybe you didn’t.

Fast forward — what, five years? NetFlix has a now-famous patent on a proprietary algorithm that takes your past movie ratings, compares them to other users with similar tastes, and makes frighteningly good recommendations for what to watch.  Not only does Netflix pick my movies for me, it has them waiting for me when I get home from work — so that even before I consciously think “You know, I’d like to watch a new movie tonight,” one is already in my hand.

Pandora was next, redefining radio.  In fact, Pandora is so far from traditional radio, we probably should come up with a new word for it.  Suddenly I can create my own radio Pandora stations based on a song or an artist I already know and like, and Pandora will play me other music that I don’t even know I like yet. Pandora knows you better than you know yourself.

The latest, greatest step in the evolution of mind-reading technology, hands down, is Shazam. Hold up your phone in a club, or in the car, or to your TV during a commercial — any time you hear a song you don’t know, Shazam will listen for a few seconds and tell you what it is.  If you’re using Shazam on the iPhone you can then click through and purchase the song immediately through iTunes — now you own that song you couldn’t even name 30 seconds ago.

WHAT??! Where was this ten years ago when I was just discovering my passion for ’70s funk standards that get radio play about once a year (now you know something about my taste in music — but still not as much as Pandora does).

Media consumption now is cross-platform, on-demand, and fully customized to your individual tastes.  Kids nowadays are growing up in a world where they will never have to worry about finding new music or movie suggestions, sitting through commercials on television (Tivo is a topic for another post), or tracking down an unknown song they like.

Every generation likes to think that it was character-building to have faced all the challenges that technology overcomes automatically for subsequent generations, but maybe it just makes us bitter.  Then again, it’s hard to stay bitter for long while you’re grooving to a commercial-free Kool & The Gang Pandora station, knowing that an obscure indie film you’d never heard of (but are almost guaranteed to love) is on its way to your doorstep.

It’s a completely new ballgame for brands looking to engage consumers on the iPhone. Google recently announced the ability to serve iPhone-specific versions of their AdWords, a no brainer for them — but what about companies that want a deeper engagement with their brand, beyond impressions or clicks?  It’s time to start thinking about building your own branded iPhone app.

Audi launched the first high profile branded app, a driving simulator that exploits the iPhone’s internal accelerometer to control your steering.  Ford was not far behind with an app promoting the new Flex.  I just came across a new Mercedes application this morning.  The Audi app in particular got impressive marks from CNET Reviews:

The odd thing was that in spite of the game’s flaws, I couldn’t stop playing. While it’s no Gran Turismo, Audi’s little iPhone app is a pretty fun distraction during a boring commute on the train…. Of course, at it’s core, the game is a marketing app for Audi’s vehicles, but it’s not an overt one. At no point did Audi make me sit through a commercial or a sales pitch. The link to the iPhone optimized site sits quietly on the main menu screen for you to click or ignore. I think this minor amount of advertising is well worth being able to play a cool, free game.

The first thing Audi got right, and this is absolutely crucial, is that they recognized when you build a branded iPhone app, people are using their app despite your brand’s affiliation, not because of it.  This may sound off-putting, but it has implications that are extremely positive.  For Audi, it meant that users invited the brand onto their iPhone, engaged with it regularly and for relatively long periods of time, and most likely talked about it with friends.  Could you come up with a better definition of success for a branded iPhone application?

Although many companies will now rush out and try to build the Next Great iPhone Arcade Game in Audi’s footsteps, it’s important to reflect on the fact that a slick driving game resonated with this particular brand — the product placement (the Audi line of vehicles) fit naturally into the function of the app.

Without further ado, I bring you five guidelines for a successful branded iPhone app:

1. Be cool. Not in the trendy sense, but in the laid back sense. Chill out. Build an app that people enjoy and can use, and let them engage with your brand along the way to whatever degree they choose.  No pre-roll anything.
2. Be true to your brand.  I guarantee there are brands out there trying to repeat Audi’s recipe that have no business doing so.  Some consumer packaged goods company is going to build a flight simulator. Good luck with that.
3. Don’t forget it’s a phone first.  Know what the iPhone is, and what it isn’t.  Keep in mind why people use it in the first place — communication first, media (MP3 and video) consumption second.  How can you extend one of these primary functions?
4. K.I.S.S. Don’t try to do too much. Just because you can tie in to a million robust features of the iPhone through the development platform doesn’t mean you should.  Apple products are synonymous with simplicity.  Yours should be too.
5. Generate word of mouth. People should want to blog/tweet/email about your app.  But most of all, they should also want to show it off to people offline (in the “real world”).  We’re still early enough in the iPhone’s product life cycle that these things still still have a ton of novelty value and people want to show them off.  Create apps that your users want to show off to their friends. I’m a huge fan of the infamous I Am Rich application, if only for the incredible buzz it generated.

It’s an exciting time to be building apps for the iPhone.  The development platform is unprecedentedly robust, and the App Store provides the perfect delivery channel for app-hungry users. Although the territory is relatively uncharted, many lessons have already been learned about what makes for a successful branded application.

(Photo credit: Popgadget)