Oh, the places you’ll see! (Are the places they’ll see too.)

A discussion on vision and privacy in an augmented world.

Augmented Reality is coming. Are we ready? (Courtesy of Magic Leap, Apple, and the Pokémon Company)

I just want to state before we begin…

I began writing this in March 2018. Since then, this article has gone through an evolution of changes. The recent scandal with Cambridge Analytica is a major example as to where we are heading and how large corporations are able to use our big data for their gain: manipulation in marketing, politics, and more. The world we view is the world they get to view too. Anyway…

So here we are: 2018.

We’ve had glimpses of augmented reality (AR) tech from the periphery – CES showcases of obscure and strange ways to best throw digital depictions onto your eyes, makeshift bulky hats that position your iPhone screen straight onto your face, allowing you to view what’s on the other side. We’ve recently seen more promising tech through Google’s Tango and Apple’s AR Kit, as well as Google’s response to such last year in AR Core, which just left its beta test.

Creating with Magic Leap — Courtesy of Magic Leap

In late 2017 – early 2018…

The honour of most prominent look at upcoming AR tech can be handed to Magic Leap’s unveiling (at one moment, you could hear tech enthusiasts throughout the globe breathing a sigh of relief that this thing was finally unveiled) and Intel’s Vaunt heads-up display glasses – the latter of which may not be true AR but can still be applauded as a testament to our improving technological prowess – a proof of concept that smart glasses can be somewhat stylish.

An augmented future is all too exciting – our science fiction dreams of holographic FaceTimes, virtual pets, and (of course) so-clear-you-could-reach-out-and-touch-it porn are about to become a reality. In terms of the workplace, augmented reality could provide us with the operating system to check in remotely to work for good (at least for the average desk job) and visualize and analyze quantitative data like never before (take that, Excel! You too, Clippy!) – this future is all too exciting but frightening nonetheless.

Frightening, especially if you consider our current relationship with big data. Increasingly so, we are sharing more and more of our data – our phones track our faces and location history for algorithms to analyse and piece together, our social media accounts track and gather data on our speech patterns, what we like to click on, the websites we visit, everything the world over. It’s a freaking goldmine of info for marketers and totalitarian governments. And you could argue that all of this information is driving the world – our jobs, our lives feed off of the data we create to keep our jobs going, ad infinitum. But one facet of privacy and data may change your mind: it’s the only thing left that remains essentially untouched: our vision.

Our potential augmented future IF we don’t make it clear what we stand for today.

Soon enough we will begin putting technology onto our face for real – not as a passing trend or fad – not as an “oh let’s go try it out!” VR demo. For real. Everyday.

And it will provide us with amazing benefit and ease of use on a level we have not seen from technology yet. Instead of pulling out a phone or computer or glancing at a watch, our technology will provide us with instant access to productivity, entertainment, resources, and location-based data.

But what happens when smart technology, usually considered AR, machine learning, computer vision, etc. is able to see what we see? In order for AR to help us with contextual data, visual information will likely need to be sent to a server somewhere to process what we are seeing – a server owned or managed by a large tech company – say Google, Apple, Amazon.

Will we so easily give up our visual privacy in our AR future? We are currently giving up more and more of our audio privacy – smart phones and speakers listen to our every word, waiting for the inevitable “Hey Siri!” “OK Google” and “Alexa”.

Will we so easily provide large companies with fine print intent (see the terms of use you sign away without consideration) the access to our visual world? To see where we go, who we see, how we act, what we’ll do next? And to analyze the trends and patterns in our very algorithmic ways so Apple AR-Bot or Big Brother Google can predict (likely accurately) our every move?

Glasses! Everywhere! Surveilling! Everything!

I’m not saying that this technology must be reversed or the development discontinued. And I’m not telling you to pull out the old tin foil hat from your closet. Augmented reality is here to stay. We cannot stop progress. Technology will continue to develop as it has.

But we can shape and form the dialogue of our privacy.

And we need to begin now.

We cannot wait until augmented reality headsets/glasses are unveiled at show floors and keynotes in 2020. We cannot wait until the product is complete and the technology is here.

We need to form an open dialogue about privacy now, so it has time to hit the mainstream consciousness before the technological infrastructure is worked on.

If we wait until the marketing department markets the product as shiny and must-have, until the hoard of tech-enthusiasts buy it up without consideration, until the average consumer hops on board without thinking of the repercussions, it will be too late and it will be irreversible.

Always… watching… waiting…

Perhaps in a futuristic world where we are all enlightened and look far beyond the petty everyday of human life, where we wouldn’t give a shit about privacy because judgement and power/control structures used to manipulate others over information (read: blackmail) would be so yesterday, could we thrive in a world with privacy-free AR. But until we reach such an enlightened point in humanity, I would like to hold onto my personal privacy, thank you very much.

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