I really wanted to like They Live especially after having watched The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. Similar with The Thing which is also directed by John Carpenter. Both movies start really strong and then just descend into pointless violence. Anyway, I digress ...
Nada is not smart. He's a useful idiot. I think that like The Thing, They Live is pretty ideological and subversive, but it's also just a weird campy movie. It's a genre flick, but there's a reason it's a cult classic. Just like Zizek and his guide to cinema, Carpenter knows how to make iconic quotable expressions involving a camera.
> start really strong and then just descend into pointless violence
So it goes.
Artists tell the truth by first telling a lie.
Of course at the time the computing power needed just to do the image tracking was far in excess of what could be carried on his person, so it involved a (possibly pre-WiFi) radio link to a lab network of graphics workstations, and as far as I know the software wasn't doing any kind of AI ad identification, but only matching pre-tagged ad images (or maybe just tracking the physical locations of the user vs the known location of the ads, via GPS + INS + video tracking).
It was nevertheless an exceedingly impressive demo that it has taken quite some time to make a significant improvement on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann_(inventor)
Steve Mann explains the EyeTap (2010)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiFtmrpuwNY
43 Years of Wearable Computing and AR | Steve Mann | AR in Action (2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI9obFrfZ4Q
From 1996: Meet the man who invented a wearable computer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCco6FMCRmk
DEF CON 7 - Steve Mann: The Inventor of the So Called Wearable Computer (1999)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVquUd-MFtU
At around 5:05 in this video, someone is asking:
"What type of irresponsible uses do you see for this technology, professor?"
"Uh, I think, like, advertising. Like that, that type of thing. One of the things that I'm trying to do is, is design filters to filter out advertising, so that when you're walking around, you could filter out real world spam. You know, already we have spam in the real world such as billboards, and things like that. So, what I envision is that the mediated reality could be used to filter out the spam."
Instead, I totally expect Meta and the Quest X to not block ads, but replace any IRL ads with targeted ads. You will not be able to turn this off. Instead, they could Black Mirror it and highlight each ad found and force you to stare at it for at least 5 seconds so the impression will count. If you don't, it'll just blank out everything else except the ad.
[Ed.⁰ This is a colloquialism¹; 1 Samuel 13:14,Acts 13:22:
Colloquialisms were the original shibboleths, tbh, but no sexism or other -*isms intended or defended by the aforementioned, admittedly sexist, canonical quotation]
⁰ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editor%27s_note
¹ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/1_Samuel#C...
Where we're going, you'd kill for a world where you just had ads on billboards and screens that you only saw when you were looking at them.
Just imagine the real problems we're going to deal with in a few decades with next-gen always-on AR that doesn't require a bulky headset anymore.
https://moglen.law.columbia.edu/CPC/archive/eyeball/16GATO.h...
Steve Mann's demo was I'm sure impressive, still the idea in itself is absolutely trivial (looking for ways to hide ads started the very day ads were born) and it all comes down to the execution.
Also, not for nothing, I find it hilarious that such a thing uses the world’s largest advertising company’s product to block ads.
I will be the first to buy this, but not based on Google’s AI. No thanks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
> Hyper-Reality presents a provocative and kaleidoscopic new vision of the future, where physical and virtual realities have merged, and the city is saturated in media. If you are interested in supporting the project, sponsoring the next work or would like to find out more, please send a hello to info@km.cx.
> by Keiichi Matsuda | http://km.cx
> more at http://hyper-reality.co
Why isn't this a real thing for Android that would block out ads across all apps (e.g with overlay permissions)?
Never mind billboards. Once people realize they can replace their girlfriend's face with Margot Robbie augmented reality is going to become very popular.
Not so great for the rest of us though.
I assume this was said in jest because I can't imagine anyone seriously wanting that.
that's basically just make-up, as the GP said
You don't put makeup on other people without first asking and receiving permission.
If you don't see this, I don't know what else to say
Yeah yeah - 'if I asked people what they wanted, they'd have said faster horses', but if they knew what cars were that quote wouldn't exist. Everybody knows what AR is, a sizable chunk of people have tried it, and nobody seems to want it. If there were some ultra high end AR goggles for $10, I still wouldn't buy them (sans obvious angle shoots like reselling/repurposing the hardware or just pack-ratting it away in a closet).
The reason I mention this is because of this paradox where everybody assumes its success, but nobody has any interest themselves in using it. I think this is because AR is just about literally always a part of sci-fi and so we kind of assume well it must be what the future holds. But it seems like one of those many ideas that sounds way better than it actually turns out to be in real life.
Otherwise... Eh. I don't care enough. Yet.
I'm also bad at learning & remembering a lot of people's names at once in social settings, so I'd like a discrete pair of AR glasses that used a local model to add virtual nametags to people in certain situations. (Assuming I controlled the data - I wouldn't like it if this meant data about my acquaintances would be sold behind my back).
So there's at least two potential AR applications I'd be interested in, assuming they could be made to work in a trustworthy & reliable manner for under $1k.
There are probably uses for AR today that are legitimately useful. I've never used them but I hear good things about the uses in factory floors and classes with technical machinery. But the expectation is always that that the glasses with a ridiculous battery pack (the room sized computer) will become something of a size where every single person will want to have it on them at all times.
Living memory of people alive right now are the room size computers becoming dirt cheap ESP32s.
On top of that I have little interest in discussions in real life turning into internet discussions where it's two people searching "proof my view is right [and his is wrong]" and then repeating arguments they oft have little to no understanding of. And there are also practical issues - girls would probably not enjoy the fact that there'd 100% be insta-strip apps. And then there's the dystopia of surveillance and all that stuff. Nah, not gonna happen.
More generally I think smartphones changed the world hard in one direction but, at scale, are starting to change it back in the opposite direction. They enabled great convenience, but it turns out that the nature of 24/7 tech connectivity are also quite unpleasant in many ways. And speaking of things being banned it's already quite obvious that many apps today are already working, intentionally, to function as digital drugs that will, almost certainly, also end up being treated as such in the future.
I think the one and only reason that we're stalling control of these 'digital substances' is because intelligence agencies have tremendous back-door influence and we've created a sort of global honey pot. There's probably still some fantasies of pre-crime and the nonsense belief that if you just control the message you can make people believe whatever you want (really worked well for the USSR, North Korea, and everywhere else that's tried such...). Once we get over the myopia, these things are on their way out.
The "improved" version would be sending different filter instructions to different people's AR.
(and a complete face replacement is a few steps beyond a mere "beauty filter")
But we've learned the last 1.75 years that we don't actually need such implants, our brains are still very very capable of seeing our fellow humans as cockroaches. Actually even longer than that...
If that's not a zombie apocalypse, I don't know what is
Unfortunately, we are where we are today. “Modern media” (whatever that is) and amplification from social media has allowed hate/outrage evolve from being a sledge hammer (e.g. “USSR is evil!”) into being a scalpel for daily governance and policy setting. Just look at how many people suddenly advocated for jailing (or executing, as I overheard at my kid’s baseball game) a specific former immunologist and presidential advisor. We’re tribal by nature and all too eager to treat the out-group as “less” than we are.
How long are we going to believe in the fantasy world where things just look okay but in reality they aren't
However if we get orbital advertisements… that would be very annoying.
Or even worse, ads are just green screens, and Google will run auctions on why get filled in on your VR glasses based on AdChoices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Christmas_(Black_Mirror)...
Maybe someone will invent an electrochromic layer on AR glasses that can selectively block light at individual pixels (rather than darken the whole lens, as current electrochromic layers on some AR glasses do)... that's when RealWorldAdBlock would actually be viable.
In the same way, even pixel perfect darkening has the same problem. You don't see a nice cutout, you see a blurry blob.
If there’s a future vision pro that’s half the weight and bulk… I could easily see people walking around with one. They would be unusually oversized sunglasses by then.
Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.
"So long, and thanks for all the fish."
Thanks for the reminder, Mr. Dent. Don't forget your towel™
Everything about Google and the innovation of surveillance in advertising is horrible.
But when it's non personalized, people forget that their interests can easily be aligned with the advertiser's. It's information. We're adults and can treat it appropriately. It's good to know if X movie is coming out or X pizza place just opened. It doesn't mean we're stupid enough to take the claim about how great the product is literally. We can compartmentalize that part as biased.
I don't go on a first date and get hostile when the girl tries to say something good about herself.
And our respective governments primarily let the companies do this. And since it is a tragedy of the commons situation, governments SHOULD be involved to make sure the primary tragedy isn't invoked...
But the primary tragedy has been invoked (invasive ads everywhere, making our environment and living worse), so we waste massive amounts of money on an overly expensive individualist solution (AR goggles).
Dr Steve Mann who eventually led the Google Glass team (along with Dr Thad Starner, who like Mann was also a frequent poster in the MIT wearhard mailing list) did this ages ago with a system he and his students called Eyetap.
Mann is famous for among other things being probably the first person to be roughed up for being borged out.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/07/17/cyborg...
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/technology/at-airport-gat...
For instance -- I talked to some guys who made awesome super-wide postcards of famous landmarks, but they had been sued by the Louvre for using a photo they had taken of the pyramid, because the structure is copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without licensing.
Think about that dystopia.
https://www.onlinevisibilityacademy.com/buildings-that-are-t...
ostensibly for database language, forked versions of DB.
Yes, it would be, but I am very concerned about a future where others control what I see - e.g. that I'm driven for various reasons to use a non-free OS, which comes with bloatware that injects things into my field of view.
bell-cot•7mo ago
- How much are AR owners willing to pay for blocking?
- How much are AdTech firms willing to pay to be unblockable?
bambax•7mo ago
bell-cot•7mo ago
Aren't lots of people currently buying glasses that block none of the ads?
And "naturally", the adtech folks learn and adapt, so any all-blocking AR glasses you buy today will get worse over time.
bambax•7mo ago
Also, on the web (on non-Google browsers) uBlock Origin is still undefeated so the adtech folks adaptability is debatable.
hsbauauvhabzb•7mo ago
bambax•7mo ago
hsbauauvhabzb•7mo ago
bell-cot•7mo ago
ndriscoll•7mo ago