Reality Bits: Emergent Exhaust Patterns

My mate Corey and I wrote this thing for Campaign Magazine a couple of weeks back. 

They asked for a 'sequel' to this piece I wrote a few years back called The Invisible Web.

It wondered about augmenting reality with data and how/when we would begin to use that data layer - or the web - like blind man uses a cane, what Heidegger referred to as 'invisible technology'. 

It's starts with some McLuhaning around:

Part of the power of Marshall McLuhan’s famous aphorism – the medium is the message – comes from the forced foregrounding: it highlights the communication effect of the medium itself, which our brains filter out, rendering the wrapper invisible.

McLuhan understood a me-dium to be an extension of the senses.

The early promise of Augmented Reality (AR) hinted at an evolution of them – the incorporation of those extensions into our direct perception.

Then we decided to look at things from a more networked point of view - rather than adding a layer [or layar] into reality, we looked at what data reality was creating via the digital exhaust, and what might be interesting about that in aggregate - because

Behaviour doesn't scale in a linear way

[because interactions between individuals creates a system with emergent properties]

and because

Seeing your behavior, changes your behavior

[feedback is a loop, man] 

That's why I dropped Aaron's TED talk in at the top [Thanks Rosie!] - it shows some of the ways in which he is vizualising the exhaust, or the actions, of the many.

You can, should you be interested, download the whole thing here: 

Download Campaign 22May11 Reality Bits Faris and Corey