Ransom Riggs
“Augmented Reality” Foretells a Dark Future
by Ransom Riggs - May 13, 2009 - 11:23 AM

What if the things you did in “Second Life” had an effect on the real world? In Shaspa‘s new “augmented reality” power management tool, they do. They’ve created a program (and a hardware kit) that helps users control their home resource consumption — that is, water, power and gas. But this handy application takes an unusual form; rather than boring, spreadsheet-style lists of your devices, their status (on/off) and power/water/gas consumption levels, Shaspa has created a “Second Life”-like video game environment in which you control an avatar that roams around a 3D “home” environment and turn devices on or off. Unlike “Second Life,” however, what you do actually happens in the real world — in your home.

shaspa.jpg

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. It’s a cool idea. If your avatar turns off the bathroom light, your actual bathroom light turns off. There’s even social interaction — there are other avatars in this world, all controlling their own power consumption, and you can compare your resource use with that of others, introducing a little healthy competition into the mix. Which is all well and good, but if you ask me, there’s something just a wee bit creepy about it, in kind of an Uncanny Valley / dystopian future sort of way. It’s not hard to imagine this catching on, and years from now, people controlling more and more of their lives via third-person avatar. And why not? It’s the perfect way to complete unpleasant tasks without getting your hands dirty: armies of drones and robots remotely controlled by the grandchildren of today’s WOW geeks, disposing of toxic waste, guarding important public figures, even interacting with their own families.

I’m kind of kidding, of course. But also kind of not. Via Ecogeek.

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Comments (8)

  1. Plus you’re using a resource-intensive mechanism (i.e. the servers on which this “world” exists) to manage electric consumption…

    posted by Dane on 5-13-2009 at 12:00 pm

  2. I kinda see someone hacking into it and turning off and on all the lights in someone elses house to drive them nuts! lol

    posted by Bec on 5-13-2009 at 12:06 pm

  3. We had a system similar to that in the 80′s from Radio Shack. All the lights and some appliances were plugged into control devices. There was then a box you could hook up to your TV and you could use it to control you whole house.

    It would show you what was on or off and you had the ability to change it as well.

    It had some good use like checking to see if the garage light was on or not and then turning it off without getting up. And you could set what ever you wanted on a timer. So your bed room light would come on and then a couple minutes later the bathroom light would go on and so forth so if you did it right and had a pretty set schedule you would never have to actualy turn a light on.

    But other than that it was a complete waste of time and money.

    posted by Beth on 5-13-2009 at 12:21 pm

  4. The bit about the grandchildren of WOW geeks using avatars to interact with their families isn’t totally insane…although interacting exclusively with avatars is kinda lame!

    I’m not a WOW geek, but I am a LOTRO geek (same concept, except it’s Lord of the Rings, so it’s considerably more awesome) and I use LOTRO almost as much for its social facets as the gaming. We have friends in real life who live a long way away, and playing LOTRO with them is a great way to get to hang out without expending tons of gas. Still not quite as good as real life, but better than IMs or even talking on the phone.

    posted by Fruppi on 5-13-2009 at 12:46 pm

  5. I applaud any efforts to popularize energy efficiency. Your slippery-slope fears of an incredibly distant future where the virtual world supercedes reality as the primary method of human interaction has about as much validity as the movie “The Matrix” does in prophesizing our future. Shame on you for your scaremongering.

    This post is almost as lame as the “new Mac smell” post by David K. Israel a couple months ago. But not quite.

    posted by Joel on 5-13-2009 at 1:36 pm

  6. @ Joel —

    I’m mostly joking about the dark future thing. I’m all for energy efficiency. But thank you for saying I’m not as lame as David?

    posted by Ransom Riggs on 5-13-2009 at 1:46 pm

  7. You’re not lame!

    posted by Lulu on 5-14-2009 at 7:18 am

  8. Madness. Reminds me of a graphic novel called The Surrogates by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele. Only in that story the avatars also existed in our physical realm.

    posted by me@jameskurtz.com on 5-14-2009 at 9:17 am

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