Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
headquarters. The placement of the experience turns most average citizens into
activists when asked to draw something above a strategic government building such
as the White House.
1.16
Negative Aspects of Augmented Reality
As with every new technology, there has been a backlash against the use of AR
for activist purposes. A recurring point of contention is that the technology masks
the evils of the world and that it detaches society from reality. “Against those who
claim that augmented reality is the future of activism, we need only say: Everyone
may wear blinders but the world will still stink of decay.” Micah White (
2010
). The
activist response to White is that we never set out to mask the stink and decay of
the world; instead we set out to expose it and bring people out of their homes, to
it. AR has the power to reveal the unseen. White misunderstands the technology.
Ironically, White's blog text alienates the public from themselves and the real world
their monitors. The act of creating a dialogue which solely exists in a net based
format only fuels societies' detachment from reality. The time spent reading is time
taken from the real world. Instead we (AR activists) set out to expose the real world
and all its faults to new audiences who are trapped behind White's computer monitor
and reveal to them the unseen horrors of the physical. AR can make digital activism
engage the physical world. AR can heighten the public's understanding of their
physical surroundings making them more in touch with the world around them. We
live in a day and age where startling numbers of people communicate more and
more through social media such as Facebook and Twitter. AR activists should turn
these technologies into face-to-face experiences that take place in the real world.
The goal of future activists working with AR should be to liberate the masses from
their computers and get them excited and engaged in the real world by talking to
each other! Not all having the same app or fancy smartphone, but using app to
generate discussion and community.
Other critics of the technology dislike AR as a tool for activism because they
say it is a “safe” medium that is created from behind a monitor and keyboard. They
see this technology creating a generation of armchair activists, protesting from the
comfort of their homes completely detached from the physical yet complacently
satisfied they have fulfilled their obligation in the fight for social justice. Creating a
generation of activists who show up at the protest as virtual avatars with digital
protest signs made up of one's and zero's. “[AR] absolves 'participants' of some
of the basic requirements of a traditional protest [like] showing up, getting hassled
[and] offering oneself for arrest,” - Carl Skelton (Chen
2012
).
Skelton's fears are grounded in the writing of the Situationists and Guy Debord.
“All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.” The spectacle
is the inverted image of society in which relations between commodities have
supplanted relations between people, in which “passive identification with the
spectacle supplants genuine activity”. “The spectacle is not a collection of images,”
