Whether the light is being used for brain surgery or night baseball is a matter of indifference. It could be argued that these activities are in some way the "content" of the electric light, since they could not exit without the electric light. This fact merely underlines the point that "the medium is the message" because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action. -
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, pp. 8-9
At this moment, there is a very good chance that you, the reader, are in arms length of a smartphone. In fact, data firm Nielsen would argue that there is about 50% chance that you own an iPhone, Android, Blackberry, or any other number of other operating system/handset combinations that make up the smartphone market. Boulos et al. define smartphones as "...mobile phones that offer not only the standard facilities such as voice and text communication, but also advanced computing and communication capability, including...Internet access and geo-positioning systems..." as well as "...on-board personal management tools, high quality cameras and recording devices" (p. 3). The smartphone, and on a smaller scale the tablet computer, allows for computing and Internet access whenever the user desires. Like the electric light McLuhan talks about in Understanding Media, the smartphone is becoming the medium that "shapes and controls" how we, as a society, are communicating with the physical and virtual worlds as well as how we communicate with one another.
Due to the introduction of the smartphone on a mass scale, our society has reached Bolter and Grusin's idea of hypermediacy, and more specifically ubiquitous computing, in which QR codes and other forms of augmented reality can flourish as normal parts of technological life. The rise of the smartphone and the increase in QR code marketing and interest in other augmented reality technologies have converged to grow different augmented realities through different services and applications.
Throughout my work, I go back to the theories set up by Bolter and Grusin covering hypermediacy, transparent immediacy, ubiquitous computing, and remediation as a whole. I use these theories to frame the idea that we are now in a world that can support a functional augmented reality (AR). Azuma defines augmented reality as "...as the 'middle ground' between VE (virtual environments) (completely synthetic) and telepresence (completely real)" (p. 2). The technologies that I discuss include QR codes, global positioning satellites, and visual overlay. All three of these are beginning to enter the mainstream as legitimate ways for the average smartphone and/or tablet user to use AR.
Augmented reality, while at times a novel concept, can be and has been used effectively in the medical, engineering, and military fields for years now (Azuma). One example of this is a military pilot using a heads-up display (HUD) that displays critical information on his visor. As AR technology becomes more popular with consumers and businesses alike, I want to investigate more about how these technologies work and what their implications are for the future of communications. First, I want to figure out what those funny looking barcodes are.
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