[I've been thinking lately about our perception of evil. The number six. Social Security Numbers. Television sets. This might seem like a weird assortment of random things, but in their own day, they were thought of as the utmost in demonic representation. In other words, they were thought to be evil. Work of the devil. Only as time passed on did we accept such things as the norm, and today we seldom live without such devices and systems]

[Why do I bring this up? I dunno. It's my blog. I guess I empty my thoughts into it, as it were a Pensive of some sort. But I do post relevance. The older a person was, the more and more newer shit they hated. Music. Technology. Machines, if you really wanna get down and dirty. People despised the industrial revolution. Alas, a line exists between distrusting something, not wanting it and then plainly classifying it as 'evil'. So, where does this leave us?]

[Today, we have things that were really hated. TV's rank among such things. It was considered witchcraft, such devices. Hope you like your wooden stakes nice and hot, boys and girls. Then we had credit cards, online transactions. People were unsettled as, suddenly, cash was starting to be replaced with invisible currency. Decades later, this is only now becoming a reality, yet still seemingly far away. The bottom line is that we tend to demonize things far too quickly. So to what end am I sharing these thoughts? Well, augmented reality of course! Augmented Reality, or AR for short, is popularly known as 'virtual reality'. It is the idea that we put on headgear or something and install our sordid selves into the game itself. We become part of the game]

[Some of you might think this is a ridiculous notion, that we would never have this tech soon. You would be wrong - we have already sewn the sordid seeds. Furthermore, have we demonized it already? Back about six years ago, there was a movie which told a tale of the anti-christ, and how they utilized technology, particularly AR, to take over the world. And as cheesy as it might sound, the AR ideas they implemented into the story were not far off. Someone put a set of headgear upon their head, and suddenly you were anywhere you wanted to be. Painless, you could hurt yourself over and over. Any environment you wanted to be in, at your fingertips! You could walk, hear, anything you could not in real life. But then, when things got heavy, the programming was changed, and you could cross the line between AR and reality itself, with the ability to cut yourself in that world and retain that injury in the real world. Oh, dem bones dem bones dem - DRY bones....]

[Today, we have motion control. And we have improved upon it greatly. We have PlayStation Move, which is basically Wii MC on steroids. We have Kinect, which makes our body the controller. And now we have features starting to surface from PlayStation Move itself, utilizing the Eye, making it possible to overlay images from a video game straight into your living room. Creepy? Maybe. But that's our perception of evil. Cisco built a successful, 40GBp/s network, capable of transmitting holographic video images. Oh yes. We have holographic video boys and girls, ladies and gents. It's HERE. And last I heard, German scientists had created a new platform for fiberoptical data transfers, far exceeding anything we have so far [wait...what? Somebody beat Cisco? Is that even POSSIBLE? Kudos Germans!] With all this technological advancements happening right in front of our eyes, who's to say what the near future is going to bring, in terms of AR?]

[This brings us to the million dollar question. Where will this end? I would love to see this end up similar to The Matrix or Surrogates, where we sit in a chair or some device and we live our lives INSIDE a game world. Think of Assasin's Creed! You reach an area of a map that has to load! So cool! Perhaps I could finally date some of the video game characters that don't exist? Oh ho ho, a new form of cheating could exist! Suddenly, wives and husbands will leave one another over AR cheating! Having sex with a woman that doesn't exist! Is this really that crazy of a thought? And if this does come to pass, what of national relations? What of evil? Is this evil?]

[In closing, we tend to label things negatively in our minds a little too quickly. Maybe some of this stuff is evil. And maybe, just maybe, we're seeing signs of our age. I hate MC. Perhaps that is one of my traits for old age, as time passes on. Perhaps I will forgo this gaming world entirely some day. And now, I leave you with a quote. One I am very fond of. Think on the words, and think about what you would like to see from AR. Perhaps you'll get your wish sooner than you expect] -AT9-

"I live in a world of fantasy
So keep your world away from me
I see what I want
I want what I see
And that is all
okay by me"
-Anonymous-