mer Gzak

21301328
Digital Culture Final

Are Augmented Reality Devices

Becoming New Prosthesis?
Throughout the evolution of man, technology have become a very
important aspect in human life and affected it in great extent. The origin of
the word comes from Greek and has a meaning of systematic treatment
of an art, craft, or technique. The systematic flow of technological
advancements started with first men carving rocks to use as a weapon to
the digital world of ours. For ages we have used technology to improve
ourselves and do whats beyond our limit. It has become a very important
part of human life even in ancient times and nowadays we could not
imagine a life without it. Technology got into our everyday life, to our
houses, our body

Until our age, technology was most commonly used to overcome our
deficiencies and improve ourselves. In other words, we used it as a
prosthesis. Similarly this word also has a Greek origin and derived from
words pros and thesis meaning addition and putting in order. So we can
think this word has a meaning of having additional things to yourself as we
have also said similarly with technology. First inventions like wheel and
crude weapons were prosthesis as well. They extended capabilities of
men, making them to travel faster, longer and made them more powerful
than their fists and nails only. But in todays world, we started to use
technology not to improve ourselves but to have fun. With virtual realistic
systems being used, technology lost its identity as prosthesis. Huge

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amount of virtual reality systems were produced and they are getting
more realistic every day. Even now these systems affected lots of people
socially and emotionally. Some people started to prefer virtual reality to
their real lives and this situation could get even worse with further
advancements being done. At some point, these systems will get almost
identical to real life and people would have hard time making distinction in
between them.

Oculus Rift is one of the projects that was released recently in 28 March. It
is a virtual reality headset that provides both visual 360 visual and sound
as user rotates his head. Unlike previous ones, this device is powerful in
terms of reality. With a good computer, one can have a virtual reality
medium that is just liken real life. Nowadays this device is 600 dollars and
you also need a powerful computer that is estimated to worth 1500 dollars
to process it. As it is expensive for now, it is not widely used but in near
future, these devices will be much cheaper and widespread used. These
type of systems would alienate people from the physical world and make
them unsocial. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have announced his plans
to make Facebook work in virtual reality. With this technology people
would connect to a certain virtual environment and interact with their
friends just like in real life with their virtual bodies. Even though we have
thought that social media would make us more social, they did not. They
just made relationships harder and people tended to give more importance
to their look online rather than themselves. Even this current version of
social networks made people less social and it is impossible to predict
whats coming when these projects finish. Even though these technologies

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are exciting, they possess a great danger to our societys well-being as it

might be very hard for us to control.

Augmented reality based technologies has been improving in recent years

and it also preserves technologys identity as a prosthesis. Augment
means to increase something and it could be interpret as increasing the
capabilities of self or the current reality just like prosthesis. These devices
are widely used in advertisement sector and started to be used
individually. There are lots of mobile applications used in very different
areas. One famous one is IKEA catalogue. IKEA has released an online
catalogue application and with your smartphones camera you try putting
furniture into places you want virtually on your phone and see it
immediately. Also there is a translation application which immediately
translates the word or sentence that is being seen by the camera. Most
commonly these technologies are currently limited to smartphones. The
main aim is to make them more integrated to ourselves by putting all
these type of features to a glasses like device. With this way, augmented
reality will not be limited to vision of a camera and will be freed. There are

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multiple companies working to produce these type of devices and some of

the most famous ones are Google Glass, Microsoft Hololens and Sixth
Sense.

Main drawback is that devices are expensive and inefficient in most areas.
Most of them suffer from battery problems as these devices need to
process the environment frequently. First wearable augmented reality
technology was presented by Steve Mann in MIT laboratories but real
breakthrough was done by an Indian engineer Pranav Mistry in 2009. He
named his device as Mann referred to his: Sixth Sense. In 1999, Mann
named wearable technological devices like his Synthetic Synesthesia of
the Sixth Sense devices and these terms are still used today. Sixth Sense
is made of two basic parts: a camera and a projector which is mounted to
the ones body. The camera processes everything that user sees and
processes it accordingly. In order to activate this devices features, user
should make certain gestures. One example would be making turning your
arm and pointing your finger at your wrist and this would make device
project a digital clock to where you are pointing. When you make a frame
with your hands, device would take a picture of it. These features go on
but as you can expect, they need a lot of processing as device needs to

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catch every move of the users and analyse the surface that projector work
on. Even todays smartphones are not good in terms of battery capacity.
Main problem with this technology was battery. It also needed high speed
internet as it was processing every bit of thing it sees. For example, if you
are in a bookstore and holding a book, it immediately projects the rating of
that book with comments and similar thing goes on with other products as
well. When you are reading a newspaper it projects the video news version
of the column that you are reading. In order for these things to be satisfied
high speed connections are required in everyplace user is going to.
Constant need of high speed internet was among other reasons for this
project to not become successful. Sixth sense technology is currently
stalled but it inspiration to other companies to work on wearable
technologies.

Microsoft Hololens is another wearable technology that presents an

augmented version of the reality. Just like sixth sense, it has cameras but
does not have projectors. Instead of them Microsoft used hologram
technology to put them inside the glasses. Unlike sixth sense, it does not
projects anything to outer space but it creates a hologram inside the
glasses that only user can see. This technology does not have any limits as

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it can create a hologram in everyplace that you can see. Think that you
are in a city that you dont know the language. This device would translate
the signs for you. It has a similar core with Sixth Sense even better maybe
but as the other areas of technology have advanced, success of it is more
possible. Telecommunication technology have advanced so far in recent
years: 5G was introduced and high speed connection requirements of the
device is satisfied as an example. Only drawback left is the price of the
product. Currently beta version of this device is worth 3000 dollars and
final version would be as expensive as this value in 2017.

Technology always had an effect on our lives but augmented reality based
technologies would make a huge impact on the way we perceive things.
Virtual reality in games are even now alienating people from society and
also demobilizes them. Men need to be active but these systems are
making people go against their own nature. People are getting more and
more immobile and future advancements like Oculus Rift that would make

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these games more attractive, possesses a great danger. As augmented

reality devices require high interactivity like gestures and body movement,
they would not alienate us from our own nature. Also these additional
features will be added to the current reality not onto the artificial reality
that is created. These devices will make our life easier and more fun in
fact. Rather than being a prisoner in virtual reality, they would be our
prosthesis improving us in every possible way just like any other
technology in the past.

References:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathleenchaykowski/2016/02/24/mark-zuckerberghas-a-plan-to-make-virtual-reality-social/#5685d0197959

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?
term=technology&allowed_in_frame=0
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=prosthesis
https://www.oculus.com/en-us/rift/
https://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthse
nse_technology?language=en
http://www.cnet.com/products/microsoft-hololens-hands-on/
http://www.gizmag.com/ikea-augmented-reality-catalog-app/28703/