If you have about half an hour, I strongly encourage you to watch this talk by Jesse Schell. It’s fun. (Also, embedded at the bottom of this post.)

But if you don’t have half an hour, let me sum it up for you:

Games are spilling into reality, and reality is becoming more like a game. More and more actions in your daily life are rewarding you with experience points.

It basically ends there, with a nice note about how your grand kids will be able to find out just exactly how much of a loser you were, because your entire life is being recorded.

I don’t think Mr. Schell went far enough. What happens when people realize they can trade points for real things? What happens when the guy who sucked at regular, money-earning jobs finds out he’s really, really good at getting points for stuff he was already doing anyway?

What happens when we realize we no longer need money?

What are the implications of a currency that, instead of being printed in limited supply by the government, is infinite and generated by our own actions as individuals?

Just some thoughts.

Fortunately communications can be consolidated. But not with email. (I don’t think I can explain why email sucks better than Naomi Dunford at IttyBiz did, so just go to the link.) One great way to tell everyone who could possibly care that you are away/sick/available for coffee at so-and-so time, is by tweeting it. Yes, that’s right. Microblogging can help kill email. For more complicated things like sharing ideas: regular blogging.

This all seems pretty obvious after actually typing it out. So where does it go? That’s the interesting part.

We may be doomed to live in a world, from here on out, where we never really connect with anyone. All our blog comments just get lost in a sea of other people’s blog comments and none of them get read ever.

Or we have to think of it like advertising. We see a billion or something ads every day. How many do we notice? Like one? Two maybe if we’re still big enough suckers to own a TV? Point is, the ones that get noticed usually get noticed because they put a ton of effort into getting noticed by 1) being relevant and 2) being rewarding in some way. It seems silly to have to think it out like this for basic human-to-human interactions, but with a billion or something of us all communicating all the time, something has to be done. Either make yourself interesting and relevant, or keep hoping for an apocalypse.

Also, contemplate this: with constant updates, geo-tagging and all that crap, I could just be like, “Well guys I’m heading over to Cafe Whatever, anyone into whatever it is I feel like talking about today can show up.” Or with augmented reality, I could just kick back and turn my real-life chat settings to “available” when I’m out, and meet people that way. In the real world. Where stuff is actually manageable.

And I might get free coffee.

But will it replace fireworks? NEVER.

Via Singularity Hub, who thinks this might replace fireworks. They are wrong. Nothing is as awesome as fireworks.

Obviously it’s a great tool for telling how fast some guy pacing around in your office is going. Also, robot armor and smart windshield HUDs. But what else could this possibly be used for?

1. AR racing games. With actual racing! My Hotwheels versus your Hotwheels. Cat versus dog. Little Timmy versus the lawnmower. Anything can now be raced with accurate 3rd party judging right on your mobile phone, including the mobile phone itself!

2. An app that knows when it’s raining and tells you the closest place to buy an umbrella. This sounds boring and lame compared to the others, but next time it starts raining on you, you’ll wish you had this. You know it’s true.

3. An app that knows when you’re running and shows you the best place to catch a cab, buy pepper spray, or take cover in a gunfight.

4. An app that alerts you when cars/bullets/freakishly fast zombies/dinosaurs are coming at you. The alert would have to be sort of urgent for this to be effective. Maybe an electric shock?

5. Gambling. Mobile radar generates another set of statistics on the world around you. What else do non-marketing people use statistics for, really?

6. Outdoorsy stuff. You’re in a forest. There’s obviously tons of animals around, (duh, it’s a forest,) but where the eff are they? Mobile radar will show you! You might even find Bigfoot.

Granted, if you're running from the law for a suspected murder you haven't committed yet, this may pose a problem. Otherwise: no problem.

1. Other drivers. When my dad was teaching me how to drive when I was 13 (it was New Mexico), he would often tell me, “I trust you, it’s the other drivers I don’t trust.” I realize now this was total crap. I was a freaking 13 year old behind the wheel of an 800 pound killing machine. The second half of his statement, however, remains unchallenged. How to fix it: Create an Internet of Cars and let them drive themselves. Studies in ants have revealed the main source of traffic congestion is drivers – so why not make them all passengers?

2. Headlights. You’re going 65mph down a dark, narrow, twisty road, in a no-passing section, with five other cars behind you, scanning the thin section of forest that you can see through the headlights for anything that vaguely resembles Middleofeffingknowhere Lane. A car coming the other way momentarily blinds you. After GPS politely informs you that you’ve missed the road, you start looking for a place to turn around. Suddenly a deer jumps out of nowhere, you slam on the brakes, and everyone’s Christmas is ruined.

I stole this image from a right-wing fundamentalist blog. It was a metaphor for the Obama administration. Racist?????

How to fix it: Screw headlights, screw GPS, screw your iPhone, and screw every mock-up I’ve seen so far for a smart windshield HUD. I want 360 degree echolocation and infrared sensing. And those road signs – yeah. They’re not getting off easy either.

3. Road signs. Little, hard-to-read, smashed-up, pointing-the-wrong-way, poorly-lit, hidden-by-trees, sometimes-missing-entirely motherfrakking road signs. How to fix it: Make every road sign send out a wireless signal and display itself in previously-mentioned windshield HUD, but not in some crappy, complicated pop-up. I just need it overlaid where the actual sign would be to make up for the epic failures of real life and the Department of Transportation.

4. Literally everything else about cars. They crash, they break down, they run out of gas, they pollute (yeah even your Prius, douchebag), they’re expensive and there’s nowhere to park them. How to fix it:

Four little words, that's all I wanna hear. You know the ones.

1. Porn. Now that that’s out of the way…

2. Shopping. Yeah, that sweater looked great on the website – it even looked good on me. But it itched like an std from a mosquito when I finally got it in the mail and I couldn’t return it because it’s freezing outside and now I don’t have a sweater. Jerks. If only there had been some way to know it would be itchy beforehand…

This is what Obamacare feels like.

3. Texturtizing. Now your brand has a texture! Who’ll try to copyright “warm and fluffy” first? …Probably T-mobile. That was a stupid question.

4. Puns. “Our new product rocks!” Ad feels like a rock. (Please never do this.)

5. Menus. Frak scrolling and pop-ups. I can just dig around in my virtual bag of holding for that +5 fire augment or whatever. Warm and hexagonal ftw.

6. Blind Internet. Refreshable braille displays can only go so far.

7. Texture tones. Like ring tones, only… textures.

"Ah crap, it's my chemically-imbalanced middle-manager from the post office."

8. Tagging. Imagine a Flickr-style tag on a photo that instead of saying some inane crap about the use of lighting, it feels like dewy flower petals.

9. Texturepedia. Ever wondered what the inside of your veins feel like?

10. The other kind of menus. On the nano-scale taste is really just texture – why not sample your meal before hand with a lick? Oh. Right. That.

11. Music. Music videos are so 20th century. I shouldn’t have to be on drugs to feel techno. Drugs are expensive.

Btw I learned about haptics on Singularity Hub. You guys rock. (rollover: igneous rock texture.)

Here’s what I predict for the next ten years:

1. Augmented reality will become as commonplace and useful as the internet became in the 90s, as consumers buy more smartphones and early experimenters find out what works and what doesn’t. Remember when the first few URLs started showing up in ads? We’re there now with augmented reality.

"I could really use a cold one! Anyone else down for the fresh taste of the Rockies?"

2. Brands will embrace the new emphasis on social interactions, sometimes to extremes – think robots you can hang out with in bars who casually suggest Miller at every opportunity.

3. 90s fashions will dominate. No, not those 90s. The other 90s.

4. We’ll finally get a space elevator. It’ll be made out of carbon nanotubes. It’ll be 100% privately funded.

5. Near the end of the decade, the whole “authenticity” thing will be played and we’ll want fake stuff again.

6. Nanotech will be used for evil. Also, good. Also, marketing.

7. We’ll discover conclusive evidence of life on a another planet. It will be related to us.

8. There will be fewer, and less deadly wars, thanks in large part to communication between citizens via the internet.

9. Social games and gestural user interfaces will totally pwn traditional consoles and controllers, annoying some but finally making the industry “culturally relevant” via deep, meaningful interactions. Later in the decade, the cool kids will finally get into console games for the retro factor. Irony will win the day.

10. Social media, geotagging, augmented reality, security concerns and chronic over-sharing will join forces to completely destroy what little privacy we had left. Surprisingly few people will complain.

And to the last ten years: good riddance, I hope you burn in hell.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I like it better.

Joseph Pine on what consumers want | Video on TED.com.

We checked it out, got wasted and took some crappy cell phone pictures for you. You’re welcome.

This was a a basic AR/projector setup that let you interact with some floating clouds. It was strangely calming, and made us really, really wish we had a projector at home. Clouds or no.

T-shirts that do stuff ftw. Imagine the secret T-shirt messages you could program into a mobile app that does this.

Le monde des montagnes, a freaking adorable book by Camille Scherrer, 25 year-old adorable European AR nerd, made me wish I could read French. Also, speak it enough to be witty and impress her.

No seriously, the book is CUTE.

I promised sexy didn’t I? You pop a euro on this thing and a stripper shows up. Check out the video.

In conclusion, awesome job swissnex and everyone else involved, thanks for the booze, and I can’t wait to see what these artists are doing in five years. Just promise me it won’t be Video Olympics.

Dems fightin words, Chris.

Why AR maps are not overblown:

I think Dannen has seriously underestimated the usefulness of AR maps, and forgotten the alternative that “the masses” are still actually using: paper maps. Remember those? You have to find out where you are on the map before the map can tell you jack.

"business man lost in feild using map" Lol. Stock photos ftw.

Why AR games are not overblown:

Forget back-pain inducing tabletop print-out crap. AR mobile games are no more awkward than any of the trillion or so other mobile games out there now. They will be overlaid on your coworkers, the bus, the plane and the line at the DMV. They will be casual. They will be social. They will be addictive. They will be funny, exciting, innovative – and yes a lot of them will suck. A lot of everything sucks.

Why the potential of AR is not overblown:

Look around you. No seriously, take a second and just give it a glance. Something in your vicinity right now has a question attached to it. “When is that construction site going to be finished?” “When is that library book due?” “How often should I be watering that plant?” “How do you say ‘fork’ in Mandarin?” “Are these people even speaking Mandarin?” “Where can I buy another chair exactly like this one?” “What the hell is that new guy’s name again?” Some of these questions can be answered easily with a quick internet search. Some of them require recognition software. All of them could be instantly answered with AR.

So why aren’t “the masses” excited about AR?

Guess what? “The masses” don’t get excited about tech buzzwords. They never have and they never will. For “the masses” to get excited, it would have to be called “augmented reality of mass destruction” or “swine augmented reality flu”. “The masses” don’t even know what a browser is. All they care about are the parts that are relevant to them. If you want to find out if someone likes TV, you don’t ask their opinion on cathode ray tubes. You ask them what they thought of the season finale of Lost. The same goes for AR: make a program that’s relevant to them (go on, you can do it,) and ask about that.

In the meantime, try offering ideas in addition to criticism.