A while ago I went to see Matt Mason talk about his new book The Pirate's Dilemma at the RSA (I wrote about the talk here). I've just finished reading the book, which btw is pretty good, so I thought I'd note a couple of bits I liked here so I don't forget.
Mason talks about augmented reality and envisions a world where we use virtual tags to mark real spaces. He writes: 'you avoid slipping on an icy patch on the next corner, and leave a virtual marker warning others, as you follow the large arrow you (and only you) can see in the sky pointing out the directions the friend you are meeting sent you ... the means to display this information through eyeglasses, overlaying the natural world with additional information, has been a possibility since 1989 ... the internet (is) just a 2-D blueprint for the coming reality'. This is how he sees the evolution of the tagging we already do on GoogleMaps and the like.
I'm always complaining to older people that our generation (born after 1980) haven't really had any massive youth movements. Mason makes a good point that youth culture in the west can't really exist for enough time to become a movement because it is assimilated into mainstream culture/marketing before it gets a chance to grow. Also trendy parent-syndrome means that its just that bit harder to rebel (oooh, you're listening to crackstep, do they sell it on iTunes?). According to Mason the next interesting youth cultures will come from Asia/Africa/Latin America because thats where the generation gaps are.
Mr Mason book and talk sound great.
Posted by: Sarah Rabia | May 24, 2008 at 12:41 PM