Trendspotters have been anticipating a world with augmented reality for sometime — will 2025 be the year when those predictions come to fruition?
Augmented reality (AR) is the term for reality plus a digital layer — whether images, immersive audio, holograms, 3D models, and more. It’s the experience that Mark Zuckerberg is aiming for with the Meta Orion eyeglasses that I wrote about some weeks ago.
Examples of AR in cities include everything from art project Kinfolk, which uses AR to show people digital monuments dedicated to Black and brown historical figures, to InCitu, which uses AR to help people envision what new developments will look like in their neighborhoods.
These are benign examples of using AR technology, but are unlikely to be the primary use case. The AR that the mainstream will experience is likely to not only include another layer of ads, misinformation, and social media, but to require people to use this technology to access goods and services.
How can cities better anticipate the mass adoption of AR technology and do better than they have done with the last round of disruptive technologies and tech startups to hit cities, such as Uber and Airbnb?
I chatted with Greg Lindsay, one of my favorite fellow writers and thinkers on urban conditions, about his new report, The Augmented City: Seeing Through Disruption. For the report, Lindsay used “threatcasting” to envision the major threats and opportunities that AR poses to cities. He rounds out the report with recommendations for city leaders. You can download the report here and listen to our conversation at the audio player up top.
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