The Dangers of Augmented Reality to Society

Augmented Reality, a new form of technology. Together with Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence it is growing rapidly. This  new kind of technology has multiple possibilities, for entertainment and for informative purposes.  I am very interested in this topic, since I am part of the next generation. This means, when I will be working in a few years, offices won't be like the ones we have now. AR will be applied in various situations to, supposedly, make life easier. But what I wonder is;  Is society ready to transfer part of reality into a digital world?  Most people just started to learn how to use a tablet or a smartphone. And suddenly, we are mixing these two things together. In this blog I will analyse the concerns which come along the uses of Augmented Reality. I will do this with the help of various sources, to answer the next question; What are the dangers of Augmented Reality to society? If you are not yet familiar with AR, I recommend you to watch...

A Dress with WI-FI? On the second of February 2020, it was time for the annual BAFTA Awards, which are the awards for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Next to fancy dresses and a lot of make-up, augmented reality played a big role this time. Designer Richard Malone created, especially for this event, which was worn by British television presenter Maya Jama. What was special about this dress is the fact that it interacted with a 5G internet connection. That’s right… a piece of clothing with Wi-Fi. Now let me elaborate on how this works. First of all, the dress took 250 hours to complete and it consists of six layers and more than 100,00 hand sewn stitches. This is already impressive, but it gets better. The dress also contained more than 18 sensor bulbs and 12 full body-length electric wires. These sensors interacted with the 5G network, which made it possible for the dress to transform on a giant screen next to the red carpet, but also on viewers their smartphone...

Pokémon GO... More like Pokémon GONE... Pokémon GO is a mobile game from 2016 which uses the power of Augmented Reality. The Purpose of the game is to capture virtual Pokémons. But because this is a augmented reality game, you actually have to leave your house and walk around to play it. This all seems fun at first; it sounds even healthier than sitting behind your computer all day. The truth is however that the outdoor gaming part can be quite dangerous. In your room, you are safe and protected from external influences. But walking on the streets with your attention on your phone makes you extremely vulnerable. Even though the game promoted physical activity, multiple governments were concerned about the security of the players. Therefore, police departments in various countries started with the expression of sincere warning statements. These warnings were mainly about issues like trespassing and inattentive driving. However, some additional concerns occurred too; playe...

Augmented Reality and Deepfake videos For this post I would like to elaborate on the concerns of deepfake videos. With the use of augmented reality it is very easy to make such videos. If you are not really familiar with what deepfake videos are, I posted a video of it. Pay extra attention from 2:50 to 4:25.  So as you might have seen, these fragments look very realistic. This can be funny when you, for instance, manipulate a video of a relative of a friend with your own voice. But the fun disappears when this manipulation is used to provide people with wrong information in order to convince them from something. Especially with politic related issues can this be very misleading.  Senior Lecturer IP Law Dr. Luke McDonagh addressed one more additional problem at 6:55. This problem is that there is not a clear attitude of the court towards deepfake videos, since there is not yet a clear piece of legislation. Until this is the case, there will be a legal uncertainty and...

Ethical Issues In order to get a deeper understanding of the subject, I have read a scientific article, the link to the website is provided below. I definitely recommend you to read it in case you are interested. Professor Prithwijit Das and others talk about their concerns related to augmented reality video games.Prithwijit, Zhu, McLaughlin, Bilgrami and Milanaik (2017) state:  “Given the widespread use of video games among children and adolescents, the health implications of augmented reality technology must be closely examined.” Further in the article he goes into the history of augmented reality video games and their positive implications. But, of course, there are negative consequences too. What I think is most remarkable is that Prithwijit et al addresses next to the physical and mental safety issues, also the ethical issues. These issues are based on the violation of one’s privacy. We already knew that Google is also tracking your preferences and expenses. But an augmen...

With help of various articles and videos I have given you multiple insights to the concerns of Augmented Reality. Although this amazing kind of new technology has many positive purposes, it definitely brings dangers along. Dangers which could, on short- and on long term, hurt individuals but also society as a whole. Not yet convinced? Let’s sum up some of the most serious concerns! If we invent and develop new technology, we should be aware of the environment. Just because technology is often related to innovation, doesn’t mean it innovative. And this means that we are not helping the earth as much as we should. In contrast; “We discard 20 to 50 million tons of technotrash worldwide every year, which amounts to about 5% of all solid waste” (Soltan, n.d.). As long as we don’t have the technology to reduce this ‘technotrash’, we shouldn’t try to invent other electronics which only makes it worse. We all live together on this planet, so we have to be responsible. Now let’s look ...

After all these posts about the dangers of augmented reality, I hope you have become interested in the subject and curious for more. For this reason I will provide you with some more links. Some links I have used in one of my posts, but some you haven't seen yet. It's always a good idea to increase your list of sources! https://www.newscientist.com/article-topic/augmented-reality News Scientist is a website which provides blogs, reports and news articles. Like the name suggests, it is mostly about science and technology. Since augmented reality is getting bigger, you can often find a brand new article about it on this website. The only bad thing is that free users have limited access. https://arpost.co/category/augmented-reality/ The link itself says it all: this is the perfect website if you want to know more about augmented reality. I do warn you that 99% of the news articles is written with a positive vibe, neglecting all concerns. So, it is very use full to gather...